7 ms·

I'll take issue with a specific point: affirmative action. Affirmative action starts with a premise different from yours: that college admissions shouldn't be a

I'll take issue with a specific point: affirmative action. Affirmative action starts with a premise different from yours: that college admissions shouldn't be about past performance but about future potential. And if there's nothing genetically wrong with black people, then blacks should be demographically represented in colleges. If they're not, then there's something wrong with admissions. "A black person that truly deserved to get into Harvard..." You come from the premise that you deserve to get into college based on your past performance. That's valid, but you should be making arguments against the premises of the affirmative action, then. "Furthermore, since affirmative action shifts the whole bell curve to the right, blacks are disproportionally more likely to drop out of university, since they are likely the least academically qualified to be there. This creates further racism as over the years professors tend to note that the blacks they teach tend to drop out." According to the guiding principles behind affirmative action, this isn't simply a consequence of the policy, but another injustice to be addressed. Blacks aren't genetically predisposed to dropping out, they just have very different social and cultural circumstances that aren't conducive to graduating. The things that you (I presume) and I (I'm Asian) take for granted, many black people cannot. A proponent of affirmative action would argue that we need more social college programs that help and encourage black students in ways that lead to better graduation rates. "Many blacks that get into Harvard and graduate are treated as sub-students by employers like major banks." This is simply prejudice on the part of employers. Why should employers take into account how someone got into Harvard, instead of judging them solely on their performance at Harvard? My point is that you apparently don't fully understand the premises and reasoning behind affirmative action. Many who oppose it don't. [Edit]: I suppose my meta-point here is that it's easy to take a hard-line view when you don't fully grapple with the opposing argument. When you really fully try to understand the other side, you come to a more nuanced position, and a respect for the complexity of issues. I think it's parallel to the Dunning-Kruger insight that you don't know what you don't know. Certainty is a sign of ignorance, even in yourself. If you are certain about something, it's time to re-examine your assumptions.

ataggart 15y ago
>And if there's nothing genetically wrong with black people, then blacks should be demographically represented in colleges. If they're not, then there's something wrong with admissions. Perhaps genetics and racism are not the only factors affecting demographic representation in colleges. See: Asians.
tzs 15y ago
> This is simply prejudice on the part of employers. Why should employers take into account how someone got into Harvard, instead of judging them solely on their performance at Harvard? That's a good point for employers, where they can perhaps reasonably ask a new graduate for a copy of his transcript and see how well he actually did, but in a lot of cases someone evaluating a graduate does not have access to such details. For instance, if I have to choose between two lawyers, or two doctors, and all I know is that they have degrees from the same school, and that one of them is in a group that was significantly under represented at that school before Affirmative Action and was not under represented afterwards, then it is, from a probabilistic point of view, in my interest to pick the one that was not from an Affirmative Action group. Example: suppose a school has 1000 people in a given class. Before Affirmative action, the breakdown was 950 from group A and 50 from group B. Group B is 10% of the general population, so is under represented at this school. The school institutes an Affirmative Action program that lowers the standards for group B, so that they are able to change their class distribution to 900 A, 100 B. If I later have to pick, say, a lawyer, and all I know is that they were both in that class, and one is an A and one is a B, if I pick an A then I get someone who I know met the original admission standards for the school. If I pick a B, there is a 50% chance he met those standards, and a 50% chance he was one of the ones who got in under the lower standard. Without any other information, I'm clearly better off going with the A. Note that this only applies to school where they lowered standards for group B to increase their numbers. There are other ways a school can try to get more B. Caltech, for instance, wants more females. Rather than lowering standards, they just try really hard to get any qualified women who apply to accept. They will send a representative to visit the woman and her family to pitch the benefits of Caltech, for instance, whereas if you are a man you'll only get that kind of treatment if you one of those once in a decade prodigies like a Peter Shor or an Arthur Rubin.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  For instance, if I have to choose between two...doctors... Just to give some hard numbers: http://web.archive.org/web/20080801022539/http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2007/mcatgparaceeth07.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20080801022539/http://www.aamc.or... In terms of grades/mcats, black medical students are about 1 standard deviation below white/asian students. There is little good data on how this gap evolves as medical students become doctors.
yummyfajitas 15y ago
Affirmative action starts with a premise different from yours: that college admissions shouldn't be about past performance but about future potential. Why do you believe a black applicant has higher future potential than an equally or more qualified white applicant? At university of michigan, blacks were given 20 extra points on the admission point system, equivalent to 1 full point of GPA. A black student with a 2.6 GPA would be more likely to be admitted than a white or asian student with a 3.5. Why do you believe that this hypothetical black student has more future potential than the white or asian student? And if there's nothing genetically wrong with black people, then blacks should be demographically represented in colleges. Ignoring for the moment that we have little good data on whether or not there are relevant genetic differences between blacks and non-blacks, why would there need to be something genetically wrong for blacks to be underrepresented? Why couldn't (for example) cultural factors cause blacks to be less likely to perform well in school?
- fleitz 15y ago
  Asians are also a minority and have in the past faced extreme prejudice similar to Africans and yet are discriminated against by affirmative action in college admissions because their high gpa would normally cause them to be "over-represented". Affirmative action is quite silly.
  - oelewapperke 15y ago
    That can only be true if blacks really are genetically predisposed to be less likely to pass college. I know it's forbidden to say this, but it's quite simple : that's a fact. It's been researched to death, and the conclusions are pretty obvious : the different human races differ in intelligence just like they differ in loads of other factors (calcium tolerance, immune response, likelihood of specific diseases, likelihood of cancer, ...) The sad part is that a bell curve enormously magnifies differences between people. Take 2 groups : A and B. Suppose the bell curve for B was shifted 1/10th of a standard deviation lower (which is a tiny amount, less than 1 IQ point). If you then take a random person from group A, and a random person from group B, the chance that the person from group A is smarter is over 96%. This is of course why evolution kills of entire species for being 0.1% less efficient than the competition. Tiny differences result in a huge shift of the chances in real encounters.
3pt14159 15y ago
I've actually read and thought about these issues quite thoroughly. I've changed my position on a number of opinions, most notably would be the idea that no one should own land indefinitely. That certainty is a sign of ignorance and therefore I am ignorant because I am certain is false because that argument is circularly invalid. This statement: "If you are certain about something, it's time to re-examine your assumptions." Seems pretty certain to me. But I'll cede that I do struggle with the complexities. A couple months ago I wrote this: http://zachaysan.tumblr.com/post/11602694501/on-economics http://zachaysan.tumblr.com/post/11602694501/on-economics where I outline past beliefs and why economic policy is hard to study empirically. To me it fundamentally comes down to ethics. However, I do fully grapple with the opposing arguments that are in favor of Affirmative Action. I just reject them. I understand their side, I've just been lead to believe it is suboptimal. "[I]f there's nothing genetically wrong with black people, then blacks should be demographically represented in colleges. " That sounds like you are projecting your way of western thinking onto a subculture you probably don't fully understand. Maybe blacks culturally value things that we don't, like exercise or leisure. I don't know and I don't care because to me it is racist to favor or disfavor one group based on race. Furthermore it is an affront to liberty to force another institution to commence a transaction they do not want to do (allow a substandard applicant to join). "Why should employers take into account how someone got into Harvard, instead of judging them solely on their performance at Harvard?" I'm not saying they should, I'm saying that they do. If the side effect of them doing so (if their rational ends up being right) is that they get higher preforming workers then they will grow and this system of discrimination will grow with them. If they are wrong, then their competitors are able to get black graduates cheaper, and, at the margin, grow faster. Alan Greenspan only hired female economists because he was convinced that they were just as smart as men, and he could pay them less. Of course his firm ended up being wildly successful. I'll end with saying that Canada does not have an Affirmative Action policy, And I saw absolutely no systemic intellectual difference between them and the rest of the school. "The things that you (I presume) and I (I'm Asian) take for granted, many black people cannot." Thomas Sowell, a world class economist, the black son of a poor single mom agrees with me on Affirmative Action. I go with appeal to authority because it is my only defense against an Ad hominem.
- joebadmo 15y ago
InclinedPlane 15y ago
How will someone have an equal chance of succeeding in college if they have experienced a substandard education for the preceeding 13 years? Affirmative action in college admissions is little more than tokenism. A way to cover up for the disparities in quality in K-12 education, to pretend socioeconomic differences dont aff
InclinedPlane 15y ago
How will someone have an equal chance of succeeding in college if they have experienced a substandard education for the preceeding 13 years? Affirmative action in college admissions is little more than tokenism. A way to cover up for the disparities in the quality in K-12 education, to pretend socioeconomic differences have no impact on college preparedness, and to white wash the fact that increasingly a high school diploma is no guarantee of a certain level of mastery of mathematics, literacy, etc. In short tweaking college admissions rates based on race is about the least effective way to try to fix problems in educational disparity or even to fix problems of race bias in college admissions.
- joebadmo 15y ago
  Hm. I'm not sure why you would assume that AA tries to address or single-handedly solve the problem of primary education. It's aimed specifically at the problem of admissions. Other programs should and do target primary education at large, as well as the problem of minority students' performance in college. Arguing that AA doesn't fix all the problems of race and education is a straw man argument. the least effective way...to fix problems of race bias in college admissions. What are the more effective ways?
  - lojack 15y ago
    > What are the more effective ways? Eliminate everything to do with race from college admissions. When I applied, I never met with any admissions in person. The only reason any school I applied to would know my race would be from the question on their application. Affirmative action is inherently a cause of racial bias (decisions are made based on the color of ones skin). If AA didn't exist, skewed numbers for college admissions would merely be an effect of other, real problems. You don't fix ethnic disparities by introducing more racial bias.
    - OpieCunningham 15y ago
      Eliminate everything to do with race from college admissions. A relatively simple way of determining race with a high degree of probability is through a person's name (1). Next would be a person's location. After that, a person's primary school location. Or any lists of a person's interests/extracurricular activities. You cannot eliminate determination of race in college admission (or nearly any other application process). Affirmative action is inherently a cause of racial bias (decisions are made based on the color of ones skin). Yes, that's right. And on the other side there already exists racial bias. The analogy is steering a car, when you have a car that pulls to the right, you counter steer it to the left in order to go straight. In a car you can eventually address the root cause of the steering issue by taking it to a mechanic (assuming you drive straight to get there!). There is no mechanic to solve the root cause of racism - you can only address the symptoms and promote awareness. With no other alternatives to address racism in the application review process, the only solution is to apply equal and opposite bias to address the symptom of inequality. AA is specifically intended to discriminate against non-minorities in order to counter balance the discrimination that already exists against minorities. (1) http://www.chicagobooth.edu/capideas/spring03/racialbias.html http://www.chicagobooth.edu/capideas/spring03/racialbias.htm... The authors find that applicants with white-sounding names are 50 percent more likely to get called for an initial interview than applicants with African-American-sounding names. Applicants with white names need to send about 10 resumes to get one callback, whereas applicants with African-American names need to send about 15 resumes to achieve the same result. In addition, race greatly affects how much applicants benefit from having more experience and credentials. White job applicants with higher-quality resumes received 30 percent more callbacks than whites with lower-quality resumes. Having a higher-quality resume has a much smaller impact on African-American applicants, who experienced only 9 percent more callbacks for the same improvement in their credentials. This disparity suggests that in the current state of the labor market, African-Americans may not have strong individual incentives to build better resumes.
Jach 15y ago
> if there's nothing genetically wrong with black people, then blacks should be demographically represented in colleges. If they're not, then there's something wrong with admissions. This is vague and not good reasoning. You say "nothing wrong with black people" (p) --> "demographically represented in colleges" (q). In your attempt at proof-by-contradiction, you notice that NOT(q) is true, which should imply NOT(p)--something is wrong with black people. We know that's not right either, so what's wrong here is the initial p-->q. So you set up a new p-->q with "there is nothing wrong with admissions" --> "blacks are admitted in a demographical proportion", note NOT(q) again and conclude that NOT(p) is true, that is, there must be something wrong with admissions. Whether one wants to accept this new p-->q is completely separate from the issue of something being wrong with black people. Outside of this logic, NOT(q) could be a sign of any number of things besides "there's a problem in admissions." Of course, the reality is that there are several feedback loops, and the actual causality doesn't flow one way, so it's hard to reason about (1-bit logic is insufficient) and even hard to influence. One might go around starting with blacks were once thought of as genetically inferior which led to some aspects of their current culture, and now that the genetically-inferior problem is taken away, the bad aspects of some black culture are still there, and they in turn go on to feed the continuation of the culture as well as produce subpar students and other bad individuals who will then be noticed by well-off folks who will associate the race with bad people, not because of some thought that they think black people are genetically inferior, just that they've noticed a lot of bad black people--of course, this leads to effects that are barely different from those caused by people actually thinking black people are genetically inferior, so you have "racism" where "racists" can be backed by observation (limited or not) instead of prejudice which will continue to feed into parts of the loop. And forcing employers to hire substandard black workers is not sufficient to fix the problem in the cycle of substandard black workers being produced in the first place, which has many sources like black culture, "racists", its members being on average poor since no one wants to hire them and other reasons, and more. So you try to fix the poor problem, but you don't because it's not as easy as just making sure they can't be refused a job just on their race. So you get employers complaining about the ineffectual overhead, and you spawn a new type of racist who assumes all black people with jobs were put there instead of a more qualified white man due to affirmative action, and these new types of racists start feeding into the cycle too.
cousin_it 15y ago
> college admissions shouldn't be about past performance but about future potential These two variables are highly correlated. Do you think adding a fudge factor for students from disadvantaged groups will give you a more accurate predictor of future potential than just looking at past performance? Is there any data to support that claim? > Why should employers take into account how someone got into Harvard, instead of judging them solely on their performance at Harvard? Judging them solely on their performance at Harvard should still lead you to the conclusion that AA students are worse performers on average. That's true even in the hypothetical world where AA students don't come from a disadvantaged group in the first place. If blue weasels and red weasels have exactly the same distribution of skill, and you add affirmative action in favor of blue weasels, then blue weasel students post-admission will underperform their red weasel peers on average, for reasons that seem mathematically obvious.
Ex-PraliteMonk 15y ago
A friend of mine, when filling out the paperwork for joining the army, listed as his race "North American Indian." He's a caucasian with a dark complexion, and he figured (rightfully so) that being misrepresented as a minority might be helpful in the future. Years later after he finished his Masters program I wonder if he got into the university because of affirmative action. In fact he might have taken the slot of a qualified black student. That would be something.

ataggart 15y ago

>And if there's nothing genetically wrong with black people, then blacks should be demographically represented in colleges. If they're not, then there's something wrong with admissions. Perhaps genetics and racism are not the only factors affecting demographic representation in colleges. See: Asians.

tzs 15y ago

> This is simply prejudice on the part of employers. Why should employers take into account how someone got into Harvard, instead of judging them solely on their performance at Harvard? That's a good point for employers, where they can perhaps reasonably ask a new graduate for a copy of his transcript and see how well he actually did, but in a lot of cases someone evaluating a graduate does not have access to such details. For instance, if I have to choose between two lawyers, or two doctors, and all I know is that they have degrees from the same school, and that one of them is in a group that was significantly under represented at that school before Affirmative Action and was not under represented afterwards, then it is, from a probabilistic point of view, in my interest to pick the one that was not from an Affirmative Action group. Example: suppose a school has 1000 people in a given class. Before Affirmative action, the breakdown was 950 from group A and 50 from group B. Group B is 10% of the general population, so is under represented at this school. The school institutes an Affirmative Action program that lowers the standards for group B, so that they are able to change their class distribution to 900 A, 100 B. If I later have to pick, say, a lawyer, and all I know is that they were both in that class, and one is an A and one is a B, if I pick an A then I get someone who I know met the original admission standards for the school. If I pick a B, there is a 50% chance he met those standards, and a 50% chance he was one of the ones who got in under the lower standard. Without any other information, I'm clearly better off going with the A. Note that this only applies to school where they lowered standards for group B to increase their numbers. There are other ways a school can try to get more B. Caltech, for instance, wants more females. Rather than lowering standards, they just try really hard to get any qualified women who apply to accept. They will send a representative to visit the woman and her family to pitch the benefits of Caltech, for instance, whereas if you are a man you'll only get that kind of treatment if you one of those once in a decade prodigies like a Peter Shor or an Arthur Rubin.

yummyfajitas 15y ago
For instance, if I have to choose between two...doctors... Just to give some hard numbers: http://web.archive.org/web/20080801022539/http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2007/mcatgparaceeth07.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20080801022539/http://www.aamc.or... In terms of grades/mcats, black medical students are about 1 standard deviation below white/asian students. There is little good data on how this gap evolves as medical students become doctors.

yummyfajitas 15y ago

Affirmative action starts with a premise different from yours: that college admissions shouldn't be about past performance but about future potential. Why do you believe a black applicant has higher future potential than an equally or more qualified white applicant? At university of michigan, blacks were given 20 extra points on the admission point system, equivalent to 1 full point of GPA. A black student with a 2.6 GPA would be more likely to be admitted than a white or asian student with a 3.5. Why do you believe that this hypothetical black student has more future potential than the white or asian student? And if there's nothing genetically wrong with black people, then blacks should be demographically represented in colleges. Ignoring for the moment that we have little good data on whether or not there are relevant genetic differences between blacks and non-blacks, why would there need to be something genetically wrong for blacks to be underrepresented? Why couldn't (for example) cultural factors cause blacks to be less likely to perform well in school?

fleitz 15y ago
Asians are also a minority and have in the past faced extreme prejudice similar to Africans and yet are discriminated against by affirmative action in college admissions because their high gpa would normally cause them to be "over-represented". Affirmative action is quite silly.
- oelewapperke 15y ago
  That can only be true if blacks really are genetically predisposed to be less likely to pass college. I know it's forbidden to say this, but it's quite simple : that's a fact. It's been researched to death, and the conclusions are pretty obvious : the different human races differ in intelligence just like they differ in loads of other factors (calcium tolerance, immune response, likelihood of specific diseases, likelihood of cancer, ...) The sad part is that a bell curve enormously magnifies differences between people. Take 2 groups : A and B. Suppose the bell curve for B was shifted 1/10th of a standard deviation lower (which is a tiny amount, less than 1 IQ point). If you then take a random person from group A, and a random person from group B, the chance that the person from group A is smarter is over 96%. This is of course why evolution kills of entire species for being 0.1% less efficient than the competition. Tiny differences result in a huge shift of the chances in real encounters.

3pt14159 15y ago

I've actually read and thought about these issues quite thoroughly. I've changed my position on a number of opinions, most notably would be the idea that no one should own land indefinitely. That certainty is a sign of ignorance and therefore I am ignorant because I am certain is false because that argument is circularly invalid. This statement: "If you are certain about something, it's time to re-examine your assumptions." Seems pretty certain to me. But I'll cede that I do struggle with the complexities. A couple months ago I wrote this: http://zachaysan.tumblr.com/post/11602694501/on-economics http://zachaysan.tumblr.com/post/11602694501/on-economics where I outline past beliefs and why economic policy is hard to study empirically. To me it fundamentally comes down to ethics. However, I do fully grapple with the opposing arguments that are in favor of Affirmative Action. I just reject them. I understand their side, I've just been lead to believe it is suboptimal. "[I]f there's nothing genetically wrong with black people, then blacks should be demographically represented in colleges. " That sounds like you are projecting your way of western thinking onto a subculture you probably don't fully understand. Maybe blacks culturally value things that we don't, like exercise or leisure. I don't know and I don't care because to me it is racist to favor or disfavor one group based on race. Furthermore it is an affront to liberty to force another institution to commence a transaction they do not want to do (allow a substandard applicant to join). "Why should employers take into account how someone got into Harvard, instead of judging them solely on their performance at Harvard?" I'm not saying they should, I'm saying that they do. If the side effect of them doing so (if their rational ends up being right) is that they get higher preforming workers then they will grow and this system of discrimination will grow with them. If they are wrong, then their competitors are able to get black graduates cheaper, and, at the margin, grow faster. Alan Greenspan only hired female economists because he was convinced that they were just as smart as men, and he could pay them less. Of course his firm ended up being wildly successful. I'll end with saying that Canada does not have an Affirmative Action policy, And I saw absolutely no systemic intellectual difference between them and the rest of the school. "The things that you (I presume) and I (I'm Asian) take for granted, many black people cannot." Thomas Sowell, a world class economist, the black son of a poor single mom agrees with me on Affirmative Action. I go with appeal to authority because it is my only defense against an Ad hominem.

joebadmo 15y ago

InclinedPlane 15y ago

How will someone have an equal chance of succeeding in college if they have experienced a substandard education for the preceeding 13 years? Affirmative action in college admissions is little more than tokenism. A way to cover up for the disparities in the quality in K-12 education, to pretend socioeconomic differences have no impact on college preparedness, and to white wash the fact that increasingly a high school diploma is no guarantee of a certain level of mastery of mathematics, literacy, etc. In short tweaking college admissions rates based on race is about the least effective way to try to fix problems in educational disparity or even to fix problems of race bias in college admissions.

joebadmo 15y ago
Hm. I'm not sure why you would assume that AA tries to address or single-handedly solve the problem of primary education. It's aimed specifically at the problem of admissions. Other programs should and do target primary education at large, as well as the problem of minority students' performance in college. Arguing that AA doesn't fix all the problems of race and education is a straw man argument. the least effective way...to fix problems of race bias in college admissions. What are the more effective ways?
- lojack 15y ago
  > What are the more effective ways? Eliminate everything to do with race from college admissions. When I applied, I never met with any admissions in person. The only reason any school I applied to would know my race would be from the question on their application. Affirmative action is inherently a cause of racial bias (decisions are made based on the color of ones skin). If AA didn't exist, skewed numbers for college admissions would merely be an effect of other, real problems. You don't fix ethnic disparities by introducing more racial bias.
  - OpieCunningham 15y ago
    Eliminate everything to do with race from college admissions. A relatively simple way of determining race with a high degree of probability is through a person's name (1). Next would be a person's location. After that, a person's primary school location. Or any lists of a person's interests/extracurricular activities. You cannot eliminate determination of race in college admission (or nearly any other application process). Affirmative action is inherently a cause of racial bias (decisions are made based on the color of ones skin). Yes, that's right. And on the other side there already exists racial bias. The analogy is steering a car, when you have a car that pulls to the right, you counter steer it to the left in order to go straight. In a car you can eventually address the root cause of the steering issue by taking it to a mechanic (assuming you drive straight to get there!). There is no mechanic to solve the root cause of racism - you can only address the symptoms and promote awareness. With no other alternatives to address racism in the application review process, the only solution is to apply equal and opposite bias to address the symptom of inequality. AA is specifically intended to discriminate against non-minorities in order to counter balance the discrimination that already exists against minorities. (1) http://www.chicagobooth.edu/capideas/spring03/racialbias.html http://www.chicagobooth.edu/capideas/spring03/racialbias.htm... The authors find that applicants with white-sounding names are 50 percent more likely to get called for an initial interview than applicants with African-American-sounding names. Applicants with white names need to send about 10 resumes to get one callback, whereas applicants with African-American names need to send about 15 resumes to achieve the same result. In addition, race greatly affects how much applicants benefit from having more experience and credentials. White job applicants with higher-quality resumes received 30 percent more callbacks than whites with lower-quality resumes. Having a higher-quality resume has a much smaller impact on African-American applicants, who experienced only 9 percent more callbacks for the same improvement in their credentials. This disparity suggests that in the current state of the labor market, African-Americans may not have strong individual incentives to build better resumes.

Jach 15y ago

> if there's nothing genetically wrong with black people, then blacks should be demographically represented in colleges. If they're not, then there's something wrong with admissions. This is vague and not good reasoning. You say "nothing wrong with black people" (p) --> "demographically represented in colleges" (q). In your attempt at proof-by-contradiction, you notice that NOT(q) is true, which should imply NOT(p)--something is wrong with black people. We know that's not right either, so what's wrong here is the initial p-->q. So you set up a new p-->q with "there is nothing wrong with admissions" --> "blacks are admitted in a demographical proportion", note NOT(q) again and conclude that NOT(p) is true, that is, there must be something wrong with admissions. Whether one wants to accept this new p-->q is completely separate from the issue of something being wrong with black people. Outside of this logic, NOT(q) could be a sign of any number of things besides "there's a problem in admissions." Of course, the reality is that there are several feedback loops, and the actual causality doesn't flow one way, so it's hard to reason about (1-bit logic is insufficient) and even hard to influence. One might go around starting with blacks were once thought of as genetically inferior which led to some aspects of their current culture, and now that the genetically-inferior problem is taken away, the bad aspects of some black culture are still there, and they in turn go on to feed the continuation of the culture as well as produce subpar students and other bad individuals who will then be noticed by well-off folks who will associate the race with bad people, not because of some thought that they think black people are genetically inferior, just that they've noticed a lot of bad black people--of course, this leads to effects that are barely different from those caused by people actually thinking black people are genetically inferior, so you have "racism" where "racists" can be backed by observation (limited or not) instead of prejudice which will continue to feed into parts of the loop. And forcing employers to hire substandard black workers is not sufficient to fix the problem in the cycle of substandard black workers being produced in the first place, which has many sources like black culture, "racists", its members being on average poor since no one wants to hire them and other reasons, and more. So you try to fix the poor problem, but you don't because it's not as easy as just making sure they can't be refused a job just on their race. So you get employers complaining about the ineffectual overhead, and you spawn a new type of racist who assumes all black people with jobs were put there instead of a more qualified white man due to affirmative action, and these new types of racists start feeding into the cycle too.

cousin_it 15y ago

> college admissions shouldn't be about past performance but about future potential These two variables are highly correlated. Do you think adding a fudge factor for students from disadvantaged groups will give you a more accurate predictor of future potential than just looking at past performance? Is there any data to support that claim? > Why should employers take into account how someone got into Harvard, instead of judging them solely on their performance at Harvard? Judging them solely on their performance at Harvard should still lead you to the conclusion that AA students are worse performers on average. That's true even in the hypothetical world where AA students don't come from a disadvantaged group in the first place. If blue weasels and red weasels have exactly the same distribution of skill, and you add affirmative action in favor of blue weasels, then blue weasel students post-admission will underperform their red weasel peers on average, for reasons that seem mathematically obvious.

Ex-PraliteMonk 15y ago

A friend of mine, when filling out the paperwork for joining the army, listed as his race "North American Indian." He's a caucasian with a dark complexion, and he figured (rightfully so) that being misrepresented as a minority might be helpful in the future. Years later after he finished his Masters program I wonder if he got into the university because of affirmative action. In fact he might have taken the slot of a qualified black student. That would be something.