8 ms·

Why the Champions of Affirmative Action Had to Leave Asian Americans Behind

59 points by barry-cotter 3y ago

mensetmanusman 3y ago
Two wrongs don't make a right. Ignoring race and focusing on class would probably be better for the US in the long run, especially considering the demographics of the poor.
- Spivak 3y ago
  Assuming you believe that last bit that's just racial affirmative action by proxy which is unconditional under this ruling.
- analog31 3y ago
  In my view, this could be done by massively supporting public universities, community colleges, and trade schools. I think the constant focus on a few "elite" colleges distorts the entire dialogue about higher education. They don't represent the people. Their antics make the working class angry, and stoke anti-education propaganda. The state college systems stand a much better chance of educating a larger number of more diverse people, especially dollar for dollar.
  - the_snooze 3y ago
    >The state college systems stand a much better chance of educating a larger number of more diverse people, especially dollar for dollar. I wouldn't mind seeing the spread of UT Austin's automatic admissions system, where Texas high school seniors are accepted if they graduate in the top 6% of their class [1]. This gives representation across all of Texas, regardless of the resources or demographics of any given high school. State universities need to get back to serving their states at large, and not filling their classes with out-of-staters who pay full freight. [1] https://news.utexas.edu/2021/09/21/automatic-admissions-threshold-remains-at-6-for-ut-austin/ https://news.utexas.edu/2021/09/21/automatic-admissions-thre...
    - analog31 3y ago
      At first glance, it seems like supporting the schools could reduce the funding gap between in- and out-of-state students. Right now the schools are forced to scramble for money by whatever means possible.
thunkle 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20230701083644/https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-the-champions-of-affirmative-action-had-to-leave-asian-americans-behind https://web.archive.org/web/20230701083644/https://www.newyo...
NotYourLawyer 3y ago
Absolutely shameful. SCOTUS finally got this one right.
- thebooktocome 3y ago
  If you truly believe that factoring race into college admissions is absolutely shameful, then you can’t also believe SCOTUS was effective in this decision. As Harvard’s response to the opinion demonstrates, there’s an obvious loophole—colleges are allowed to take into account mentions of a student’s experience of their race in the admissions essay. Nothing has effectively changed.
  - glimshe 3y ago
    If it is so easy to ignore the ruling, why they were there to begin with? Why didn't they settle for what you said previously?
    - thebooktocome 3y ago
      Maybe I’m wrong, but it sounds a lot like you’re asking why they didn’t implement a court decision before the decision was made. The Ivies thought what they were doing was legal. It no longer is.
      - nonethewiser 3y ago
        No I think he means why didnt they discriminate by race via personal essays on the first place. Presumably its less effective.
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    I suspect Universities will still prefer some races over others. Its a pretty deeply rooted world view held by people who tend to bemoan the legitimacy of the law.
    - thebooktocome 3y ago
calme_toi 3y ago
https://archive.ph/3bU7u https://archive.ph/3bU7u
nonethewiser 3y ago
> Asian Americans, the group whom the suit was supposedly about, have been oddly absent from the conversations that have followed the ruling. This isn’t true from what I’ve seen. The major talking point was “this is great for asians!” Which I think is a problematic take. This ruling is precisely NOT about giving people “their due” based off their race. Why not also say “this is great news for whites!” Ostensibly because people dont think whites “need” it but doleing out favor based off a supposed “need” by race is the problem. This is good for absolutely everyone. No one actually benefits from institutionalized racism.
- drewcoo 3y ago
  > Why not also say “this is great news for whites!” No. It's because of this: https://www.amren.com/news/2015/10/the-asian-white-naep-test-score-gaps-by-state/ https://www.amren.com/news/2015/10/the-asian-white-naep-test... > No one actually benefits from institutionalized racism. Really? I'm sure it must benefit someone . . .
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    Ultimately no, it benefits no one. Obviously some groups benefit admission-wise but that pales in comparison to living in a racist society. The benefit someone may receive is going to be less than the detriment to society. Even if you were granted all favor based on your race with day of reckoning (nevermind inevitable strife), dont you believe that on some deeper level you are worse off than if you earned from your merit?
  - Simulacra 3y ago
    The term "institutional racism" is such a strawman argument. It acts as a catch all for essentially claiming institutions, coincidentally universities and government, are 100% racist. That just doesn't hold water given the past twenty years of these very same institutions doing everything they can legally and illegally do to boost minority inclusion. The ugly truth is that everyone is racist to a degree, no matter the color of their skin, and any opportunity or requirement that a person be judged on the color of their skin is unconstitutional.
rayiner 3y ago
Race conscious admissions gave the white people who run these universities perverse power over racial minorities. It enabled them to create an “It’s a Small World” atmosphere that effectuated the vision of diversity favored by white people. I can’t help but think that the admissions people at Harvard and Yale regard Obama as a success of “diversity” but don’t feel the same way about Justice Clarence Thomas. Minorities groveling to prove to white ladies that they’re the right kind of minority to “represent” their race is a practice that needs to be confined to the dustbin of history.
- thdxr 3y ago
  this isn't talked about enough - the people in charge still tend to all look a certain way. and even when they're trying to care about minorities it still ends up looking like asking everyone to talk, think and act like them. ultimately they're still setting the rules
- Spivak 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - rayiner 3y ago
    Opposing abortion and same sex marriage is a pretty poor strategy of getting “picked.” The white people who own everything and run everything hate Thomas more for that than they do for any views he has on regulation or taxes. Calling Thomas a “pick me” is comic book villain levels of racist. Have you ever been to the Georgia coast where Thomas grew up? Being religious and traditionalist, and even believing in bootstraps more than government, makes Thomas a typical member of his Gullah community. The only contrarian thing about him is following those beliefs to supporting the Republican Party. And even that’s not unusual. If you consider Thomas as an individual—not just a black person, but a black man from the rural south who worked his way up from poverty to the upper echelons of society—you’ll find many of the double-digit percentage of black men who voted for Trump. And that’s the problem with having elite whites curate diversity. They don’t want a representative sampling of minorities. They want minorities who reject their own communities in the ways white elites agree with, like Obama or Ilhan Omar.
nonethewiser 3y ago
I dont think it should even be legal to ask for the applicant’s race nor track their students race. I think the most appropriate response to “How many black people are at your college?” would be “I dont know we dont count them.”
- fzeroracer 3y ago
  > I dont think it should even be legal to ask for the applicant’s race nor track their students race. I think the most appropriate response to “How many black people are at your college?” would be “I dont know we dont count them.” So if a college is 100% white in a predominately black area, would you not consider that to be somewhat suspicious? What about the reverse? What if a college instituted a test that has a high chance of weeding out people of a certain race incidentally? Is that institutional racism, or is it mere chance?
  - Pigalowda 3y ago
    plurium interrogationum - why are you doing it?
    - danaris 3y ago
      Because we have a massive ongoing and structural problem with racism in America, we need to be doing something productive about it, and there's no meaningful way to do that if we have no idea how many people of various marginalized groups are in places they're traditionally excluded from.
      - nonethewiser 3y ago
        > Because we have a massive ongoing and structural problem with racism in America, we need to be doing something productive about it Well getting rid of institutional racism from affirmative action is a good start
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    > So if a college is 100% white in a predominately black area, would you not consider that to be somewhat suspicious? Assuming that was due to discrimination that would be bad. Not tracking race does not beget racism. You can oppose both. Furthermore you cant prove racism or bias from an uneven distribution of race. If we stopped tracking race maybe we could avoid this logical fallacy and focus our efforts on real racism. Like policies that explicitly authorize discrimination by race.
bradleyjg 3y ago
It’s interesting that universities have already announced that they intend to effectively ignore the rules. I wonder how the courts will deal with massive resistance II.
- votepaunchy 3y ago
  This will be enforced through (a future Republican) DOJ more effectively than the courts.
rainsford 3y ago
Even if you don't agree with affirmative action in college admissions, I've never understood the focus on its impact on Asian American applicants as a reason to reject the idea. The premise behind affirmative action is to balance out racial factors that lead to minority demographics being underrepresented, in this case in elite colleges. If some minority demographics are not underrepresented, that's great, but not obviously a reason to scrap the idea for those that are...why does it have to be all or nothing? You could argue that Asian American college attendance success is proof that there are no racial factors to balance out, but that seems silly as not every minority demographic in the US faces identical situations.
- roflc0ptic 3y ago
  Why should being born Asian so drastically negatively affect your ability to get into an elite college? It’s discrimination. They did the same thing with Jews - they introduced standardized testing, found that too many Jews were making it into Harvard, and then added other requirements so they could reject them. For some of us who want a not-systemically-racist society, this seems like a travesty
  - asadotzler 3y ago
    Why should being born the child of a parents who didn't attend ivy league colleges so drastically affect my ability to get into an ivy league college? It's discrimination.
    - roflc0ptic 3y ago
      Do you think I would disagree?
    - cuteboy19 3y ago
      Ironically the only people who disagree are 1. Harvard and 2. Sonya Sotomayor Both of whom support AA
- Pigalowda 3y ago
  Isn’t that the argument for equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity? I’m in medicine and when I talk to Asian or Indians they are annoyed by affirmative action. Everyone has 1 shot at life and they believe the US is making it harder for them. And it is.
rdtsc 3y ago
> race-conscious admissions allow Asian American applicants “who would be less likely to be admitted without a comprehensive understanding of their background” to “explain the value of their unique background heritage, and perspective” and allow colleges to “consider the vast differences within [that] community.” If I read that correctly, she (Alito) is suggesting that instead of going for academic merit they should emphasize how disadvantaged they are in their essay and hope for the best. Doesn’t that open the door for corruption and cheating? ChatGPT will write tear jerking essays maximizing victimhood points. People pretending they are a different race or nationality to game the system. Otherwise looking for a way to slip a bribe in to the admissions committee members to “grease the wheels”.
zzzeek 3y ago
the comments here seem to continue to rage about how horrible, HORRIBLE it was that private colleges were trying to help counteract the effects of centuries of institutionalized anti-Black racism, a clear and succinct take is from TPM's Josh Marshall: "First, on its internal logic, the decision can appear compelling. But step back and you see that a specific class of Americans who were enslaved for two centuries and then mostly lived under a system of legal apartheid for another century somehow still remain largely excluded from social and economic preferment. And we’re told that the constitution not only bars the government from doing anything about that but also bars private institutions from attempting to do anything about that. Judged from that more holistic perspective it’s very hard to see how that can possibly be right whatever the internal logic of “color blindness.”" "Second, the same people who wrote the amendments that undergird this decision also passed various laws specifically to raise Black social and economic power to the level of white people. So the Court’s definition of “color blindness” simply cannot have been the intent of the authors of the amendment. The history is open and shut." "Third, the question of whether the constitution requires or looks favorably on racial diversity is a complex question and it’s not entirely clear that it does, at least if we’re limiting our analysis tightly to the intent of the people who wrote the relevant amendments. But if originalism or history plays any role in your jurisprudence, African-Americans represent a unique class which the constitution specifically intends to raise to the level of white people. One could argue that that task is done somehow, or that society has changed in some respect that makes the original injunction operate differently or that affirmative and compensatory educational preferment is somehow uniquely damaging and thus a disallowed means of achieving that aim. But again, specifically for African-Americans, the “color blindness” constitutional argument doesn’t add up. "
- merpnderp 3y ago
  Only 3% of Harvard admits, according to the data they submitted for the case, were in the bottom income quintile. 70% were in the top quintile. Harvard wasn’t doing crap to fix income inequality, just keeping rich families rich while embracing overt systemic racism.
- ttyprintk 3y ago
  Well, the premise of this article starts with the reparatory objective struck down in the 1978 decision. And it’s unfair to Mr Marshall but the analysis you quote here leaves discrimination against Asian people out completely.
daniel-cussen 3y ago
[dead]
Simulacra 3y ago
Asian Americans have been slandered by some on the left as the "ideal minority" and not worthy of extra consideration or support. "The repetitiveness of the affirmative-action debate has come about, in large part, because both the courts and the media have mostly ignored the Asian American plaintiffs and chosen, instead, to relitigate the same arguments about merit, white supremacy, and privilege." "the commentators defending affirmative action ...dismissed the plaintiffs as pawns who had been duped by a conservative legal activist." Affirmative action is a political weapon and its effect has had a damaging effect on innocent people, particularly Asians. The media, the left, and just about everyone in between discounted Asians in the name of reducing "white, etc." acceptance at university.
cphilano 3y ago
This isn't great for Asians at all. But honestly, it worse for those minority groups that are discriminated against to a far greater degree. It is not looked over that Asians are discriminated against in this country, nor isn't it irrelevant that far too many biases exist against any and all groups, but imagine Asian Americans being denied for loans at the rate of Blacks and Latinos or being shot & killed at the rate as those groups. Imagine Asian communities being burned down for having any success and then buried under lakes. This landmark decision didn't help much for the Asian community as far as college admissions, but so many aren't recognizing how much it set back those communities that are exponentially being targeted to a greater degree by discriminatory practices. Many think that things will revert to "merit" going forward. Yes, in some society that is not America, that happens. In this society where financial institutions and so many other institutions still close the books on people as soon as they walk in the door based off of just the color of their skin, it does not. And how else are actions based of denying entry, services or goods supposed to be countered now? it didn't help or hurt Asians to have this Affirmative Action struck down in this case. It very much so hurt the groups that are discriminated against more so.
- cuteboy19 3y ago
  Affirmative action helped affluent blacks and Latinos. If you were poor then it very likely did not affect you either way. Your chances were zero and are zero There is no point in trying to guilt trip liberals here. That energy is better spent elsewhere

59 points by barry-cotter 3y ago

Two wrongs don't make a right. Ignoring race and focusing on class would probably be better for the US in the long run, especially considering the demographics of the poor.

Spivak 3y ago
Assuming you believe that last bit that's just racial affirmative action by proxy which is unconditional under this ruling.
analog31 3y ago
In my view, this could be done by massively supporting public universities, community colleges, and trade schools. I think the constant focus on a few "elite" colleges distorts the entire dialogue about higher education. They don't represent the people. Their antics make the working class angry, and stoke anti-education propaganda. The state college systems stand a much better chance of educating a larger number of more diverse people, especially dollar for dollar.
- the_snooze 3y ago
  >The state college systems stand a much better chance of educating a larger number of more diverse people, especially dollar for dollar. I wouldn't mind seeing the spread of UT Austin's automatic admissions system, where Texas high school seniors are accepted if they graduate in the top 6% of their class [1]. This gives representation across all of Texas, regardless of the resources or demographics of any given high school. State universities need to get back to serving their states at large, and not filling their classes with out-of-staters who pay full freight. [1] https://news.utexas.edu/2021/09/21/automatic-admissions-threshold-remains-at-6-for-ut-austin/ https://news.utexas.edu/2021/09/21/automatic-admissions-thre...
  - analog31 3y ago
    At first glance, it seems like supporting the schools could reduce the funding gap between in- and out-of-state students. Right now the schools are forced to scramble for money by whatever means possible.

thunkle 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20230701083644/https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-the-champions-of-affirmative-action-had-to-leave-asian-americans-behind https://web.archive.org/web/20230701083644/https://www.newyo...

NotYourLawyer 3y ago

Absolutely shameful. SCOTUS finally got this one right.

thebooktocome 3y ago
If you truly believe that factoring race into college admissions is absolutely shameful, then you can’t also believe SCOTUS was effective in this decision. As Harvard’s response to the opinion demonstrates, there’s an obvious loophole—colleges are allowed to take into account mentions of a student’s experience of their race in the admissions essay. Nothing has effectively changed.
- glimshe 3y ago
  If it is so easy to ignore the ruling, why they were there to begin with? Why didn't they settle for what you said previously?
  - thebooktocome 3y ago
    Maybe I’m wrong, but it sounds a lot like you’re asking why they didn’t implement a court decision before the decision was made. The Ivies thought what they were doing was legal. It no longer is.
    - nonethewiser 3y ago
      No I think he means why didnt they discriminate by race via personal essays on the first place. Presumably its less effective.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  I suspect Universities will still prefer some races over others. Its a pretty deeply rooted world view held by people who tend to bemoan the legitimacy of the law.
  - thebooktocome 3y ago

calme_toi 3y ago

https://archive.ph/3bU7u https://archive.ph/3bU7u

nonethewiser 3y ago

> Asian Americans, the group whom the suit was supposedly about, have been oddly absent from the conversations that have followed the ruling. This isn’t true from what I’ve seen. The major talking point was “this is great for asians!” Which I think is a problematic take. This ruling is precisely NOT about giving people “their due” based off their race. Why not also say “this is great news for whites!” Ostensibly because people dont think whites “need” it but doleing out favor based off a supposed “need” by race is the problem. This is good for absolutely everyone. No one actually benefits from institutionalized racism.

drewcoo 3y ago
> Why not also say “this is great news for whites!” No. It's because of this: https://www.amren.com/news/2015/10/the-asian-white-naep-test-score-gaps-by-state/ https://www.amren.com/news/2015/10/the-asian-white-naep-test... > No one actually benefits from institutionalized racism. Really? I'm sure it must benefit someone . . .
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  Ultimately no, it benefits no one. Obviously some groups benefit admission-wise but that pales in comparison to living in a racist society. The benefit someone may receive is going to be less than the detriment to society. Even if you were granted all favor based on your race with day of reckoning (nevermind inevitable strife), dont you believe that on some deeper level you are worse off than if you earned from your merit?
- Simulacra 3y ago
  The term "institutional racism" is such a strawman argument. It acts as a catch all for essentially claiming institutions, coincidentally universities and government, are 100% racist. That just doesn't hold water given the past twenty years of these very same institutions doing everything they can legally and illegally do to boost minority inclusion. The ugly truth is that everyone is racist to a degree, no matter the color of their skin, and any opportunity or requirement that a person be judged on the color of their skin is unconstitutional.

rayiner 3y ago

Race conscious admissions gave the white people who run these universities perverse power over racial minorities. It enabled them to create an “It’s a Small World” atmosphere that effectuated the vision of diversity favored by white people. I can’t help but think that the admissions people at Harvard and Yale regard Obama as a success of “diversity” but don’t feel the same way about Justice Clarence Thomas. Minorities groveling to prove to white ladies that they’re the right kind of minority to “represent” their race is a practice that needs to be confined to the dustbin of history.

thdxr 3y ago
this isn't talked about enough - the people in charge still tend to all look a certain way. and even when they're trying to care about minorities it still ends up looking like asking everyone to talk, think and act like them. ultimately they're still setting the rules
Spivak 3y ago
[flagged]
- rayiner 3y ago
  Opposing abortion and same sex marriage is a pretty poor strategy of getting “picked.” The white people who own everything and run everything hate Thomas more for that than they do for any views he has on regulation or taxes. Calling Thomas a “pick me” is comic book villain levels of racist. Have you ever been to the Georgia coast where Thomas grew up? Being religious and traditionalist, and even believing in bootstraps more than government, makes Thomas a typical member of his Gullah community. The only contrarian thing about him is following those beliefs to supporting the Republican Party. And even that’s not unusual. If you consider Thomas as an individual—not just a black person, but a black man from the rural south who worked his way up from poverty to the upper echelons of society—you’ll find many of the double-digit percentage of black men who voted for Trump. And that’s the problem with having elite whites curate diversity. They don’t want a representative sampling of minorities. They want minorities who reject their own communities in the ways white elites agree with, like Obama or Ilhan Omar.

nonethewiser 3y ago

I dont think it should even be legal to ask for the applicant’s race nor track their students race. I think the most appropriate response to “How many black people are at your college?” would be “I dont know we dont count them.”

fzeroracer 3y ago
> I dont think it should even be legal to ask for the applicant’s race nor track their students race. I think the most appropriate response to “How many black people are at your college?” would be “I dont know we dont count them.” So if a college is 100% white in a predominately black area, would you not consider that to be somewhat suspicious? What about the reverse? What if a college instituted a test that has a high chance of weeding out people of a certain race incidentally? Is that institutional racism, or is it mere chance?
- Pigalowda 3y ago
  plurium interrogationum - why are you doing it?
  - danaris 3y ago
    Because we have a massive ongoing and structural problem with racism in America, we need to be doing something productive about it, and there's no meaningful way to do that if we have no idea how many people of various marginalized groups are in places they're traditionally excluded from.
    - nonethewiser 3y ago
      > Because we have a massive ongoing and structural problem with racism in America, we need to be doing something productive about it Well getting rid of institutional racism from affirmative action is a good start
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  > So if a college is 100% white in a predominately black area, would you not consider that to be somewhat suspicious? Assuming that was due to discrimination that would be bad. Not tracking race does not beget racism. You can oppose both. Furthermore you cant prove racism or bias from an uneven distribution of race. If we stopped tracking race maybe we could avoid this logical fallacy and focus our efforts on real racism. Like policies that explicitly authorize discrimination by race.

bradleyjg 3y ago

It’s interesting that universities have already announced that they intend to effectively ignore the rules. I wonder how the courts will deal with massive resistance II.

votepaunchy 3y ago
This will be enforced through (a future Republican) DOJ more effectively than the courts.

rainsford 3y ago

Even if you don't agree with affirmative action in college admissions, I've never understood the focus on its impact on Asian American applicants as a reason to reject the idea. The premise behind affirmative action is to balance out racial factors that lead to minority demographics being underrepresented, in this case in elite colleges. If some minority demographics are not underrepresented, that's great, but not obviously a reason to scrap the idea for those that are...why does it have to be all or nothing? You could argue that Asian American college attendance success is proof that there are no racial factors to balance out, but that seems silly as not every minority demographic in the US faces identical situations.

roflc0ptic 3y ago
Why should being born Asian so drastically negatively affect your ability to get into an elite college? It’s discrimination. They did the same thing with Jews - they introduced standardized testing, found that too many Jews were making it into Harvard, and then added other requirements so they could reject them. For some of us who want a not-systemically-racist society, this seems like a travesty
- asadotzler 3y ago
  Why should being born the child of a parents who didn't attend ivy league colleges so drastically affect my ability to get into an ivy league college? It's discrimination.
  - roflc0ptic 3y ago
    Do you think I would disagree?
  - cuteboy19 3y ago
    Ironically the only people who disagree are 1. Harvard and 2. Sonya Sotomayor Both of whom support AA
Pigalowda 3y ago
Isn’t that the argument for equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity? I’m in medicine and when I talk to Asian or Indians they are annoyed by affirmative action. Everyone has 1 shot at life and they believe the US is making it harder for them. And it is.

rdtsc 3y ago

> race-conscious admissions allow Asian American applicants “who would be less likely to be admitted without a comprehensive understanding of their background” to “explain the value of their unique background heritage, and perspective” and allow colleges to “consider the vast differences within [that] community.” If I read that correctly, she (Alito) is suggesting that instead of going for academic merit they should emphasize how disadvantaged they are in their essay and hope for the best. Doesn’t that open the door for corruption and cheating? ChatGPT will write tear jerking essays maximizing victimhood points. People pretending they are a different race or nationality to game the system. Otherwise looking for a way to slip a bribe in to the admissions committee members to “grease the wheels”.

zzzeek 3y ago

the comments here seem to continue to rage about how horrible, HORRIBLE it was that private colleges were trying to help counteract the effects of centuries of institutionalized anti-Black racism, a clear and succinct take is from TPM's Josh Marshall: "First, on its internal logic, the decision can appear compelling. But step back and you see that a specific class of Americans who were enslaved for two centuries and then mostly lived under a system of legal apartheid for another century somehow still remain largely excluded from social and economic preferment. And we’re told that the constitution not only bars the government from doing anything about that but also bars private institutions from attempting to do anything about that. Judged from that more holistic perspective it’s very hard to see how that can possibly be right whatever the internal logic of “color blindness.”" "Second, the same people who wrote the amendments that undergird this decision also passed various laws specifically to raise Black social and economic power to the level of white people. So the Court’s definition of “color blindness” simply cannot have been the intent of the authors of the amendment. The history is open and shut." "Third, the question of whether the constitution requires or looks favorably on racial diversity is a complex question and it’s not entirely clear that it does, at least if we’re limiting our analysis tightly to the intent of the people who wrote the relevant amendments. But if originalism or history plays any role in your jurisprudence, African-Americans represent a unique class which the constitution specifically intends to raise to the level of white people. One could argue that that task is done somehow, or that society has changed in some respect that makes the original injunction operate differently or that affirmative and compensatory educational preferment is somehow uniquely damaging and thus a disallowed means of achieving that aim. But again, specifically for African-Americans, the “color blindness” constitutional argument doesn’t add up. "

merpnderp 3y ago
Only 3% of Harvard admits, according to the data they submitted for the case, were in the bottom income quintile. 70% were in the top quintile. Harvard wasn’t doing crap to fix income inequality, just keeping rich families rich while embracing overt systemic racism.
ttyprintk 3y ago
Well, the premise of this article starts with the reparatory objective struck down in the 1978 decision. And it’s unfair to Mr Marshall but the analysis you quote here leaves discrimination against Asian people out completely.

daniel-cussen 3y ago

[dead]

Simulacra 3y ago

Asian Americans have been slandered by some on the left as the "ideal minority" and not worthy of extra consideration or support. "The repetitiveness of the affirmative-action debate has come about, in large part, because both the courts and the media have mostly ignored the Asian American plaintiffs and chosen, instead, to relitigate the same arguments about merit, white supremacy, and privilege." "the commentators defending affirmative action ...dismissed the plaintiffs as pawns who had been duped by a conservative legal activist." Affirmative action is a political weapon and its effect has had a damaging effect on innocent people, particularly Asians. The media, the left, and just about everyone in between discounted Asians in the name of reducing "white, etc." acceptance at university.

cphilano 3y ago

This isn't great for Asians at all. But honestly, it worse for those minority groups that are discriminated against to a far greater degree. It is not looked over that Asians are discriminated against in this country, nor isn't it irrelevant that far too many biases exist against any and all groups, but imagine Asian Americans being denied for loans at the rate of Blacks and Latinos or being shot & killed at the rate as those groups. Imagine Asian communities being burned down for having any success and then buried under lakes. This landmark decision didn't help much for the Asian community as far as college admissions, but so many aren't recognizing how much it set back those communities that are exponentially being targeted to a greater degree by discriminatory practices. Many think that things will revert to "merit" going forward. Yes, in some society that is not America, that happens. In this society where financial institutions and so many other institutions still close the books on people as soon as they walk in the door based off of just the color of their skin, it does not. And how else are actions based of denying entry, services or goods supposed to be countered now? it didn't help or hurt Asians to have this Affirmative Action struck down in this case. It very much so hurt the groups that are discriminated against more so.

cuteboy19 3y ago
Affirmative action helped affluent blacks and Latinos. If you were poor then it very likely did not affect you either way. Your chances were zero and are zero There is no point in trying to guilt trip liberals here. That energy is better spent elsewhere