3 ms·

The goal posts never moved. They were always: - People of color don't experience special violence - People of color don't experience special rates of poverty

The goal posts never moved. They were always: - People of color don't experience special violence - People of color don't experience special rates of poverty - People of color aren't specially diverted from the pursuit of happiness We're so far away from this goal that we can only hazily imagine achieving it. For example, white high school dropouts have higher home ownership rates than Black college graduates [0]. Either you think Black people are just bad with credit cards (which would be racist) or you think there's some structural cause. I think people want a number, like a number of years or an amount of money so we can finally say, "we did it, we made things right." It's even in this opinion. I don't think that's a useful way of looking at it, because no metrics really capture what it's like to be in a marginalized group. Hell we can't even agree on metrics for software engineers; we definitely can't get it right for this. What we should do instead is create race conscious policies that address inequalities when we find them. We should do this for everyone btw: white people who have been victimized by the opioid epidemic, women who've experienced violence, etc. etc. Race-conscious admissions programs were doing this work for college admissions, but sadly not anymore. [0]: https://socialequity.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Umbrellas_Dont_Make_It_Rain_Final.pdf https://socialequity.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Umb...

amluto 3y ago
I think you jumped to a poorly argued conclusion with: > What we should do instead is create race conscious policies Of course, the goalposts you mentioned are good goals. But it’s far from clear that face conscious policies are appropriate or effective. Appropriateness is, of course, a matter of opinion, but the Supreme Court has decided that the policies in question are unconstitutional. But effectiveness is an empirical matter. For example, in 1996, California banned most affirmative action in public universities. (To be clear, a lot of very well intentioned people at the universities supported affirmative action. Source: personal knowledge.). It took a few years for the situation to settle down, but the results of removing affirmative action seem to have been a pretty clear benefit to black students at the University of California campuses. It turns out that, just because a policy is well intentioned, it does not follow that it is effective at achieving its good intentions. I could rattle off quite a few examples of policies that fail in this regard. https://archive.is/bjv8J https://archive.is/bjv8J
- camgunz 3y ago
  > the results of removing affirmative action seem to have been a pretty clear benefit to black students at the University of California campuses This is incorrect; removing affirmative action was real bad for Black students [0]. The article you cite references the discredited "mismatch" theory also pushed by Justice Thomas. Mismatch theory was never supported by data, and the studies that do seem to support it have huge problems [1]. No serious person thinks it's real. Race-conscious admissions were an unqualified good for millions of minority students. They're probably only second to Social Security as a US anti-poverty policy. There's no amount of weirdo reasoning or fact twisting that can obscure that. [0]: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/137/1/115/6360982?guestAccessKey=95fdbb6a-a289-4d5e-850f-cc3e162b0426&login=false https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/137/1/115/6360982?guest... [1]: https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/studies-supporting-mismatch-theory-are-replete-with-demonstrably-incorrect-assumptions-law-prof-says https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/studies-supporting-mi...
  - amluto 3y ago
    I don’t see the “mismatch” reference. I admit that article is not great. I found a much better article at one point but can’t find it again. I admit I’m dubious about the study [0]. It says: > I show that ending affirmative action caused underrepresented minority (URM) freshman applicants to cascade into lower-quality colleges. This seems like a potentially problematic metric. Drawing conclusions from this depends on the assumption that the applicant pool did not change. It appears that much of UCLA’s post-Prop 209 strategy involved programs to improve their applicant pool. I haven’t found good data, but it’s entirely plausible that the outreach works, the applicant pool has a larger (and less under-represented?) fraction of “URM” applicants, that a comparable number but smaller fraction are admitted, that a larger number and a larger fraction go to the lower-tier schools (Cal State and community colleges, for example), and that this is all a good thing. IMO, society does not benefit when a too-small proportion of qualified minority high school students apply to top-tier schools and a too-large fraction of the applicants get in. (Of course, any admission scheme whatsoever ought to benefit those who are admitted, at least so long as second-order damaging effects from a problematic admission scheme don’t make going to the university in question worse than the alternatives and so long as the university is worth going to in the first place.) It does appear to be the case, based on terrible but official data that I found, that the fraction of the UCLA student body that is black is similar now to what it was before Prop 209. But I could be misinterpreting what I found. (The recovery was very slow, which is unfortunate.)

amluto 3y ago

I think you jumped to a poorly argued conclusion with: > What we should do instead is create race conscious policies Of course, the goalposts you mentioned are good goals. But it’s far from clear that face conscious policies are appropriate or effective. Appropriateness is, of course, a matter of opinion, but the Supreme Court has decided that the policies in question are unconstitutional. But effectiveness is an empirical matter. For example, in 1996, California banned most affirmative action in public universities. (To be clear, a lot of very well intentioned people at the universities supported affirmative action. Source: personal knowledge.). It took a few years for the situation to settle down, but the results of removing affirmative action seem to have been a pretty clear benefit to black students at the University of California campuses. It turns out that, just because a policy is well intentioned, it does not follow that it is effective at achieving its good intentions. I could rattle off quite a few examples of policies that fail in this regard. https://archive.is/bjv8J https://archive.is/bjv8J

camgunz 3y ago
> the results of removing affirmative action seem to have been a pretty clear benefit to black students at the University of California campuses This is incorrect; removing affirmative action was real bad for Black students [0]. The article you cite references the discredited "mismatch" theory also pushed by Justice Thomas. Mismatch theory was never supported by data, and the studies that do seem to support it have huge problems [1]. No serious person thinks it's real. Race-conscious admissions were an unqualified good for millions of minority students. They're probably only second to Social Security as a US anti-poverty policy. There's no amount of weirdo reasoning or fact twisting that can obscure that. [0]: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/137/1/115/6360982?guestAccessKey=95fdbb6a-a289-4d5e-850f-cc3e162b0426&login=false https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/137/1/115/6360982?guest... [1]: https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/studies-supporting-mismatch-theory-are-replete-with-demonstrably-incorrect-assumptions-law-prof-says https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/studies-supporting-mi...
- amluto 3y ago
  I don’t see the “mismatch” reference. I admit that article is not great. I found a much better article at one point but can’t find it again. I admit I’m dubious about the study [0]. It says: > I show that ending affirmative action caused underrepresented minority (URM) freshman applicants to cascade into lower-quality colleges. This seems like a potentially problematic metric. Drawing conclusions from this depends on the assumption that the applicant pool did not change. It appears that much of UCLA’s post-Prop 209 strategy involved programs to improve their applicant pool. I haven’t found good data, but it’s entirely plausible that the outreach works, the applicant pool has a larger (and less under-represented?) fraction of “URM” applicants, that a comparable number but smaller fraction are admitted, that a larger number and a larger fraction go to the lower-tier schools (Cal State and community colleges, for example), and that this is all a good thing. IMO, society does not benefit when a too-small proportion of qualified minority high school students apply to top-tier schools and a too-large fraction of the applicants get in. (Of course, any admission scheme whatsoever ought to benefit those who are admitted, at least so long as second-order damaging effects from a problematic admission scheme don’t make going to the university in question worse than the alternatives and so long as the university is worth going to in the first place.) It does appear to be the case, based on terrible but official data that I found, that the fraction of the UCLA student body that is black is similar now to what it was before Prop 209. But I could be misinterpreting what I found. (The recovery was very slow, which is unfortunate.)