11 ms·

> With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. I just don't see this. In our society we believe it to be ill

• MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  We do not live in a perfect world. Instead, we live in a world where a collection of individuals has had the fruits of their labor stolen from them for most of the past 400 years, served in wars where promises were made and not kept upon their return, and are still being discriminated against in representative democracy. And when someone enumerates all the reasons that these people have been harmed, financially, spiritually, democratically, and physically... the people who are against attempts to rectify the situation given the tools available also have nothing but "fairness" to fall back on when attempting to justify their positions, because they'd rather sweep it under the rug and pretend like it's something that we should never address.
  • intimidated 3y ago
    You might not agree with the spirit of this an endeavor, but I have a yes/no question for you: If you were to wear your most clever, most creative writing cap, could you make a convincing case entirely contrary to your beliefs? I'm not asking whether you could write a convincing case against racial affirmative action, because I know you could handle that just fine. Instead, could write a convincing case that the group you're talking about owes some collective debt to the rest of society, rather than the other way around?
    • MisterBastahrd 3y ago
      I used to be a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. Their entire case is "it's not fair" in the absolute sense. That because some white folks descend from people who didn't have anything to do with slavery that all should be absolved from participating and benefitting from systemic racism. It's not an intellectual argument. It's an argument from performative and wanton ignorance.
      • wpietri 3y ago
        For sure. My ancestors mostly came to the US well after slavery. The only one that I know didn't fought on the Union side in the civil war. But that doesn't matter, because in my life I've received the benefits of being white in America. And I think a lot of that performative and wanton ignorance is basically refusal to admit that sort of privilege born of luck.
  • xdennis 3y ago
    It's quite revealing when you say that "fairness" (scare quotes) is not important. But that's not the only/main reason. The proponents of affirmative action are guilty of the very thing they say they're against: racism. When individuals are victims there's a system to deal with that. But you can't have "justice" for people based on birth, skin color, &c. You would have to have the same baseless criteria for discriminating against people. But instead of separating into "inferior" and "superior" you want to separate into "victims" and "culprits". The solution is to treat the shortcomings, not the people. If black people are doing less well in school, then it might be that the real reason is that poor people are doing less well in school, and the solution would be to deal with that, not based on race. You say 400 years, but the United States didn't exist 400 years ago. Are the descendants of Greeks (in the US) enslaved by Greeks owed compensation? Are the descendants of Europeans enslaved by Africans owed compensation?
    • MisterBastahrd 3y ago
      I think it's clear that you don't want to treat the "shortcomings" with any solution that requires something tangible. The only time governments ever treat people on a per-person basis are during the census, during voting, and during the outcomes of trials. That's it. All other solutions are class based in nature. I never said "black people." That's a you thing. And I'm an American citizen who knows that we've ALREADY had reparations for Japanese-Americans who were held for a few years during WWII but won't do the same for people whose ownership we can directly trace because we've still got the records of ownership and sale. So if you're going to be flippant, go do it with someone who doesn't understand history, because your argument is silly.
    • thebooktocome 3y ago
      > You say 400 years, but the United States didn't exist 400 years ago. As a historical fact, West Germany and East Germany both paid reparations to Holocaust survivors, despite neither being legally identical to the German Reich. If for various reasons you find that unconvincing, it’s also the case that the Funding Act of 1790 has the federal government assume the debts of the colonies.
    • kelnos 3y ago
  • tick_tock_tick 3y ago
    Sins of the father isn't a popular position in this country. It's also a very hard way to get elected.
    • thebooktocome 3y ago
      The popularity of the sentiment seems to depend crucially on who precisely the father is, and what the sins were.
    • kelnos 3y ago
      While we don't engage in mass slavery anymore (well, except for those who are incarcerated), there's still plenty of racial discrimination going on today. Even if we decide that we're not going to talk about reparations for slavery anymore, and things like that, there's still plenty that needs to be fixed that's going on right this minute.
• te_230349493 3y ago
  Legacy admissions discriminate by class (if you are well off to be part of a donor family, you get a leg up) or by birth right (if you were a lucky enough sperm to be part of the family of a prior attendee, you get a leg up). How is the principles of giving preference to a particular class or birth right any different than giving preference to race? All three fly in the face of meritocracy. Yet to not allow this means that one has to invoke government interference of private criteria. So it seems logical that there are two reasonably argued sides. It seems that if you want to follow a more libertarian model and allow a private learning institution "the right to form elite social clubs" as you put it (surely there is more function to a university than networking!), you would likewise allow it to set other policies as they may, such as allowing preferences for race. Conversely, if meritocracy is the goal, enough to force a private university to change their criteria for admissions, then all three admission practices would be problematic. The cherry-picked groupings don't make sense to me. Class and birth right favoritism is okay but race based favoritism is not? Why? On the surface, this smacks of protection of elitism and a class based society, which pretty much nulls all commentary from various peanut galleries arguing that ending affirmative action is about meritocracy.
  • dionidium 3y ago
    Whatever you think in theory, in practice we have an actual legacy of the extraction, relocation, and enslavement of a particular group of people on the basis of race. We fought a civil war about it and it remains the most enduringly contentious and difficult conflict -- the defining conflict, in many ways -- in our nation's history (right up through today). It will always be a topic deserving of special dispensation. The question, therefore, is really quite simple: 1) does that legacy justify a similarly targeted set of rules designed primarily (and maybe exclusively) for the group most harmed by that racial legacy; or 2) does our Constitution in fact demand that no such racial preferences ever again be practiced on this soil? That's really the debate.
    • Clubber 3y ago
      >The question, therefore, is really quite simple: 1) does that legacy justify a similarly special set of rules designed primarily (and maybe exclusively) for the group most harmed by that racial legacy; or 2) does our Constitution in fact demand that no such racial preferences ever again be practiced on this soil? Yes to both conflicting ideas, how about that. AA was under consideration in the mid aughts and the SCOTUS essentially said it was a special exception, and not to be permanent, but they would allow it at the time. https://gspp.berkeley.edu/research-and-impact/publications/was-justice-oconnor-right-race-and-highly-selective-college-admissions-in-2 https://gspp.berkeley.edu/research-and-impact/publications/w... 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, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest [in student body diversity] approved today.” We conclude that under reasonable assumptions, African American students will continue to be substantially underrepresented among the most qualified college applicants for the foreseeable future. The magnitude of the underrepresentation is likely to shrink—in our most optimistic simulation, somewhat over half of the gap that would be opened by the elimination of race preferences will be closed by the projected improvement in black achievement.
• elil17 3y ago
  But favoring legacy status in admissions is a form of racial discrimination because non-white people are much, much less likely to have legacy at elite institutions.
  • hnboredhn 3y ago
    Harvard posted that 70% of their legacy admits were white and 30% non-white. That's higher than the population of 18 year olds but maybe not as extreme as some would think.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • sin7 3y ago
      If a 'fair' coin came up 70% you lose, you'd be ready to fight the person trying to scam you. At the very least ready to call the cops on them.
  • randyrand 3y ago
    I don't think racial discrimination is the right term for discriminating based on things that happen to correlate with race. Everything correlates with race. Height, disease, money, eye color, divorce, number of pokemon cards, you name it. You may as well call it eye-color discrimination, height discrimination, pokemon card discrimination, etc, as well. It just makes no sense at that point. So what exactly is the point of calling it racial discrimination then? Isn't every single policy racist then?
    • hx8 3y ago
      > I don't think racial discrimination is the right term for discriminating based on things that happen to correlate with race. I agree, but we shouldn't be blind to discrimination that correlates with race, because enough of it can be equivalent to racial discrimination at a population level.
    • digging 3y ago
• s17n 3y ago
  The point is that legacy admissions have always been an egregious injustice. One effect of affirmative action was to (partially and imperfectly) ameliorate the admissions situation. Now that's gone. As far as the freedom of association goes, that's not an argument in favor of legacy admissions but it is possibly an argument that the government should stay out of it. Given the central role that universities play in our society, and the fact that they depend on government support, I think it's a complicated question. Ultimately I think it's also an uninteresting question - the important thing is building a societal consensus legacy admissions are wrong and should end.
  • mc32 3y ago
    Depends. Often well to do alumni donate significantly to their alma maters which grow their endowments and allow the institutions to offer more in terms of scholarships. That said, I agree with removing this priv.
  • kulahan 3y ago
    I never really understood the complaint. Rich people spend massive amounts of money to send their kid to a school. That massive, completely unnecessary investment is then reinvested across the students attending the school, who come from all different backgrounds. This is, in effect, one of the most common ways wealth is redistributed in the US. Why is it so bad? Maybe we should limit it, but the actual practice itself is probably more good than bad.
    • consp 3y ago
      You can do one without the other. The biggest problem in my oppinion is the lack of the mentioned redistribution for the first 18 years of the poor sob's life who lucks out since that's way more important than the extra money for the already extremely wealthy institutions.
    • Shacklz 3y ago
      > This is, in effect, one of the most common ways wealth is redistributed in the US. Why is it so bad? Because the government could simply tax those with wealth more and use taxation as a means of redistribution. Like most western countries do. Anand Giridharadas dissects this topic rather convincingly in his "Winners Take All", see also his infamous google talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_zt3kGW1NM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_zt3kGW1NM
• nradov 3y ago
  From a purely legal standpoint, the affirmative action issue is really about government funding and has little to do with limiting freedom of association. Schools that take federal funding can't violate the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Private schools that wish to continue their affirmative action admission programs are free to do so provided they forgo government funding.
  • bluepod4 3y ago
    I understand. But things are never “purely” legal though.
• boplicity 3y ago
  > we believe it to be illegitimate to discriminate on the basis of race. If there is significant and lasting harm done on the basis of race, should there be significant and lasting action taken to correct that harm? What if such harm continues today, as it does in our society?
  • wpietri 3y ago
    It is both wild to me and totally predictable that a reasonable question like this would get downvoted on HN. If people are interested in this particular phenomenon, I really recommend Mills's "The Racial Contract". [1] A contractarian philosopher, Mills wrote about how the literal centuries of social contract philosophy somehow never got around to mentioning race. His well-supported conclusion is that there was always a second implicit social contract, which he calls the racial contract. But it has an epistemological dimension where one of the rules is that we avoid discussing, avoid even seeing the racial contract. This sort of downvoting of even basic questions, let alone answers, is exactly part of that epistemological erasure that he talked about. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Racial-Contract-Charles-W-Mills/dp/0801484634 https://www.amazon.com/Racial-Contract-Charles-W-Mills/dp/08...
• wredue 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • dotnet00 3y ago
    Whenever this obvious bs excuse is used, the glaring question becomes of why are Asians suppressed by it? If it's about classically suppressed races and systematic racism, it's pretty hypocritical to be penalizing Asians. Especially when recent years have also seen a surge in people pretending to care about racism against Asians.
    • kelnos 3y ago
      Because racism can have different effects depending on who is perpetrating it. The recent surge in racism against Asians has been mostly about verbal and physical violence directed against Asian people. For the most part, Asian people haven't been missing out on educational and professional opportunities because of it. That's not been the case for other manifestations of racism. There's really no hypocrisy here; you just seem to have adopted this very narrow, binary view of racism's effects and what needs to be done to correct those effects.
      • dotnet00 3y ago
        Are you making the ridiculous implication that systematic racism against Asians hasn't existed prior to recent events? >For the most part, Asian people haven't been missing out on educational and professional opportunities because of it. Yes, no thanks to you! Apparently being willing to throw away our childhoods studying to make up for racism's effects means we deserve to face more racism.
    • wredue 3y ago
      I don’t think I, or the idea of affirmative action said anything about racism against asians, in particular the recent surge (most probably due to Mr CHAI-NUH and his base). A system of “merit” simply cannot be built on top of a system of racism. Merit is a nice end goal, but making it merit based when you’ve already made it impossible for some races to get merit is racist. Personally, I think this is an “as a black man” reply to distract from the fact that you have zero actual response.
• rhaway84773 3y ago
  I’m not in favor of affirmative action for a whole host of reasons. However, if we consider discrimination against group A to be illegitimate and yet that discrimination and it’s negative effects to people of group A remain widespread, actions to remedy that discrimination, which in many cases will indeed require treating people of group A differently, is not automatically illegitimate. Just like we consider violence to be illegitimate, but at the same time we draw a massive distinction between violence by an offender and violence done in self defense. While that’s true in general, as far as affirmative action specifically is concerned, as the legacy removals in response to the ending of affirmative action indicates, affirmative action was essentially colleges paying lip service to reducing harm while using it to justify all sorts of inexcusable practices (like legacy).
• luxuryballs 3y ago
  “However, we will sabotage our own elite social clubs as part of compliance with the new ruling with the hope that they will associate the pain with the current Supreme Court and thus hate them as much as we do.”
• underlipton 3y ago
  This is a straining of the issue with discrimination, which cannot be divorced from its history. Corrected: It is illegitimate to discriminate on the basis of race to the advantage of those previously, explicitly advantaged by their race. We believe that to be a special kind of uniquely harmful prejudice, one that fractures the deepest structures of society, because part of the country's attempt to uphold this prejudice lead to the single bloodiest war in the country's history. Affirmative action was upheld for more than a half-century in recognition of these incontrovertible truths, and was only overturned with the rise of a Supreme Court whose partisanship would be unprecedented, if it had not been preceded by the courts that gave us Jim Crow. No one even voted this change in.
  • fallingknife 3y ago
    Affirmative action was voted down even in California when it came on the ballot, so an argument to democracy here goes against you.
    • underlipton 3y ago
      California is not the country.
      • fallingknife 3y ago
        It's the most liberal state in the country so it would get voted down even harder everywhere else.
        • underlipton 3y ago
          It's liberal on some matters. It's also the state that let Rodney King's assailants off. Political progressivism doesn't ensure a lack of anti-marginalized racism.
• PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  The argument against affirmative actions was largely rooted in the concept that admission should be based on purely meritocratic considerations. Legacy admissions are the opposite of meritocratic considerations, unless you believe that genetic inheritance is such an excellent predictor of cross-generational merit. Such a belief suffers from the same basic flaws as more clearly racist ideas.
• kaitai 3y ago
  Now let's back up a moment. In US society we have said for the last 60 years max that it's usually illegitimate to discriminate on the basis of race, and before that it was legal and actually approved of to discriminate on the basis of race. Discrimination on basis of race is written into the founding documents of the land. That's what makes it the one of the deepest fractures in our society, the fact that it was legislated for the vast majority of the time the colonies and then country have existed. It's also worth acknowledging that elite social clubs have always had the ability to pick who they want -- the pretty people, the rich people, the well-connected people. Given that racism is suddenly (last 60 years) less popular/legal than it used to be in the US, is it any wonder that the elite social club of Harvard wanted to pick the most attractive candidates coming from groups previously denied admission? Now the end of "affirmative action" says that Harvard can no longer curate the class it wants to have its favored racial mix. Since this end of affirmative action is a direct strike at Harvard's ability to pick its elite the way it wants to, how do we continue to justify legacy status, again? "You can't pick people with the experiences you want; you just have to pick rich kids/according to heredity, that's the only fair way to do things." Really? Why? America hasn't always hated racism, but it has always hated a hereditary nobility.