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I grew up in India, where they have taken "affirmative action" to the logical extreme: there are explicit quotas in admissions, jobs, etc. You can have up to 50

I grew up in India, where they have taken "affirmative action" to the logical extreme: there are explicit quotas in admissions, jobs, etc. You can have up to 50% (if not more) seats in a college reserved for somebody or the other from some historically marginalized/discriminated classes. As a result, you have situations where somebody from a marginalize class scores, say, 30 in the entrance exam and still gets in, whereas somebody from the "general" class scores 90 and still doesn't get in. Where I'm going with this is: this remedy (affirmative action) is a terrible one; because once it is in place, it is impossible to get rid of (notwithstanding today's USSC decision, which was caused by a unique confluence of factors which resulted in a court dominated by conservatives). No political party will want to touch it in the future, and if at all, politicians will fall over each other trying to add more and more reservation for their voting blocks. IMHO, the solution to historical discrimination is not to lower the standards of admission, but to raise the standards of applicants. Inner city schools are terribly lacking in quality teachers, resources, facilities, etc. and that's where the fix should start. Make inner city schools so good that white families will lie about their residential status to get their kids into those schools. This, of course, requires hard work on the part of politicians, so instead, they choose the easy way out: let's just lower the standards.

known 3y ago
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OkayPhysicist 3y ago
Inner city schools are terrible, not for a lack of resources, but for a lack of familial support. I live in a state where those inner-city schools receive substantially more funding (per student, and total) than ones in wealthy suburbs. Yet, guess what, the wealthy suburbs still have wildly better outcomes. Turns out the parents working several jobs to try to make ends meet have less time to push their kid to succeed than the stay-at-home moms. Why are poor neighborhoods predominantly made up of groups that are minorities in the American population? Because America, within the last few generations by law, and up through today by social convention, has given fewer opportunities to succeed to these marginalized groups, including in education. Left to its own devices it's a cycle of poverty: Better jobs go to the better educated, better educations go to the people with parents who had better jobs. When you had a legal system actively applying a cap to the success of people in these groups less than 3 generations ago, it should come as no surprise that it takes active measures to unfuck the mess.
- 1024core 3y ago
  > Inner city schools are terrible, not for a lack of resources, but for a lack of familial support. But we've known this for a long time, and still refuse to deal with it. With some resources you can deal with this issue.

known 3y ago

[dead]

OkayPhysicist 3y ago

Inner city schools are terrible, not for a lack of resources, but for a lack of familial support. I live in a state where those inner-city schools receive substantially more funding (per student, and total) than ones in wealthy suburbs. Yet, guess what, the wealthy suburbs still have wildly better outcomes. Turns out the parents working several jobs to try to make ends meet have less time to push their kid to succeed than the stay-at-home moms. Why are poor neighborhoods predominantly made up of groups that are minorities in the American population? Because America, within the last few generations by law, and up through today by social convention, has given fewer opportunities to succeed to these marginalized groups, including in education. Left to its own devices it's a cycle of poverty: Better jobs go to the better educated, better educations go to the people with parents who had better jobs. When you had a legal system actively applying a cap to the success of people in these groups less than 3 generations ago, it should come as no surprise that it takes active measures to unfuck the mess.

1024core 3y ago
> Inner city schools are terrible, not for a lack of resources, but for a lack of familial support. But we've known this for a long time, and still refuse to deal with it. With some resources you can deal with this issue.