". . . in blocks, and before ya know it, they're all saying the same thing."

Sounds to me like he's referring to the bullshit pushed by Sinclair, a right-wing organization.

*related=https://videosift.com/video/The-Diversity-of-Local-Independent-News

The Diversity of Local Independent News has been added as a related post - related requested by Ickster.

Again...Race is not the ONLY criteria looked at, finances, family, school districts, etc all come into play....and the two students I mentioned were excellent students, far better than I was, and I'm certain their applications were accepted before race had been factored in, their scores were that good. As I understand it, race is only factored in to choose between two relatively equally scoring students, never to accept students who aren't proficient simply due to ethnicity.
Given the same educational opportunities across the board, race could be removed completely....that's simply not where we are. The proper order of things seems to be fix the underlying issues like unequal schools/education THEN remove the programs implemented to address the results of those issues. Reversing that order only further harms the downtrodden and likely never addresses the underlying issues as it removes any incentives for the ruling class to do so.

Properly funding public education so it's on par with private education seems to be step one to me. As I mentioned, we are moving in the other direction here, defunding it in multiple ways.

I mentioned why racial assumptions are often used instead of a full individual examination of all factors, lack of staff to do that examination thoroughly and a desire for diversity in the outcome.

Nice discussion, thanks for staying respectful. Time for me to move on, though....my opinion doesn't matter anyway, I'm no policy maker, just an unemployed welder/house husband with an opinion.

Your assumption is incorrect. As I've stated repeatedly, I think people should be seen and assessed individually on the totality of their character. It's just that I see the inpracticality of that in institutional settings where a few people must assess tens of thousands of applicants in months. That necessitates putting people into groups and making assumptions, sometimes by necessity that's by race. Fund education better, they might screen better. Fund all education better, they might be able to abandon all criteria beyond past performance, but that just won't happen (but $12 billion for Trump's trade war's damage to soy bean farmers, no problem, who's next?).

Ahhh....but those discriminatory practices have, and still are encoded in the law against these groups in many forms. Some have been rectified, many not, and never has there been a reasonable attempt to make up the shortfalls/damages these policies have caused these groups over decades and centuries. If I beat you daily and take your lunch until 11th grade, then stop, it's still horrifically unfair of me to insist you meet weight requirements to be on my JV wrestling team and yet not offer you weight training and free lunch to help you get there. Same goes for groups, however you wish to divide them, that have been downtrodden.
Creating policies to address the damage done in order to get the long abused back to their natural ability level isn't bad unless they aren't ever modified once equality is reached. We aren't close yet.

Some won't, most do. You make a thousand little sacrifices for the greater good daily, one more won't hurt you. If your ability is actually equal to the poor kid trying to take your place, the advantages you have over them should make that point abundantly clear and your scores should be excessively higher. If they aren't, you just aren't taking advantage of your advantages, making them the better choice.

Time will tell, but I don't see this as political, I see it as rational realism vs irrational tribal wishful thinking.
My parents both worked at Stanford, and are Republicans, and both support giving less advantaged students more opportunities to excell, and both think diversity on campus benefits everyone to the extent that it merits using race and gender as points to consider during the application process if that's what it takes to get diversity.

Your main problem seems to be that it's decided purely by race. Let me again attempt dissuade you of that notion. Race is only one tiny part of the equation, and it's only part because they tried not including race and, for reasons I've been excessively sesquipedelien about, that left many races vastly underrepresented because they don't have the tools required to compete, be that education, finances, support of family, support of community, extra curricular opportunities, safety in their neighborhood, transportation, etc., much of which is caused by centuries of codified law that kept them poor, uneducated, and powerless to change that status. No white male with a 1600 and 4.0 is being turned away for a black woman with 1000 and 2.9, they might be turned away for a black woman with 1550 and 3.8 because she likely worked much harder to achieve those scores, indicating she'll do even better on a level field.

I don't see why Republicans care, they're now the proudly ignorant party of anti-intellectualism who claim all higher education is nothing but a bastion of liberal lefty PC thugs doin book lernin. Y'all don't want none of that no how. ;-)

Edit: note, according to reports I saw years ago, without racial preferencing FOR white kids, many universities would be nearly all Asian because their cultures value education above most other things so, in general, they test better than other groups.

@newtboy
"Discrimination by itself is not bad, it's discriminating against someone (especially based on racial assumptions) that's considered wrong."

And there we can agree. I would count assumptions of white privilege as racial assumptions that are wrong to be used as a basis for discriminating against people. I get that you disagree vehemently.

I also agree that equality and diversity and race aren't simplistic problems, and that on some level everybody has some manner of assumptions or prejudices that affect their decisions.

What I can't accept or agree with is the notion that coding into law that entities should use race to discriminate for/against people makes things better.

Again, even ceding all of your points to you(only for arguments sake) coding law to discriminate against people based upon race is still bad.

No matter how hard and long you try to explain the greater good it serves, and no matter how right you are, humans will not tolerate that discrimination. When their friends, family and especially kids are impacted or are simply potentially going to be impacted negatively by it, they will push back. When the group you are discriminating against is a majority, the push back will be all the more certain and vehement when it comes.

Mark my words, if the Democrats want to die on this hill and give not an inch on it, they will continue to lose election after election until they distance themselves from it.

I wholeheartedly disagree. Those professions you mentioned require extensive knowledge of multiple disciplines and an ability to interact with other professionals, not a singular ability to preform one singular act. The criteria are varied and there is no one way to determine future performance based on any single test of abilities. Edit : Temperment, perceived social standing, manners, vocabulary, intelligence, education across the board, etc all matter in those professions, but not in basketball.

Yep, agreed, just pointing out that sports are not immune.

Those people are deluded. We don't live in a vacuum. People consider race, if only subconsciously, pretending we don't is just dishonest, and more often than not just an excuse to discriminate against others, if only by ignoring the extra obstacles they overcome to be equal.

MY policy would examine a person's entire situation, financial, local, familial, social, educational, employment, extra curricular activities, etc. and take it all into account when determining what kind of hard working student to admit. If admissions tests included all those and more in their decision, not just a single biased test result, race could be excluded unless diversity is required. Because diversity is required, both morally and legally, it would be good to start there and examine the results, then maybe race/gender could still be ignored, maybe not. We don't do that, so we can't know, but we do know the tests we use like SAT tests are biased and don't measure achievement, only specific wrote knowledge, which is a piss poor measure of a student's potential.

I think I understand your position, I do think it's important to not swing the pendulum of injustice harder in the other direction and instead work to stop it in the middle, I just disagree with your theories, your methodology, and I think you ignore many major factors and the desired/required result in order to stand immovable in your position.

Your stance says it. Objecting to using race as one of many criteria for admission in favor of a single test that clearly benefits your group ignores "all racial discrimination and racial obstacles except that single instance you can point to where it doesn't come out in your favor, then suddenly racism IS a problem that needs eradicating...."

Short sighted tribal reasoning was electing a lying cheeto with anger issues because it wore red.

Yes, but that score must, to be honest and have any value, include a measurement of the obstacles overcome to achieve that score. Taking financial, societal, opportunistic, familial, etc obstacles they've overcome doesn't seem to bother you, race is one more obstacle for many, one that's rightly taken into account when measuring a student's efforts required to achieve their current status, especially proper when diversity is part of the desired outcome of the computation.

Include a numerical modifier that takes overcoming those multiple obstructions into account and skin color might eventually be reasonably removed, but not before.

Lower scoring candidates should be chosen over higher scoring candidates based on other factors. Race is, right now, the best way to generalize those factors when trying to create a diverse student body, something we've determined is a benefit to all students. Of course, it would be better to examine all facets of performance on an individual basis, but schools don't seem to do that anymore, it's a Herculean task. Again, fund them better and they tend to do better.

From the outside looking in though, requiring diversity of genders and races by law is the issue.

If we simplify student quality down to only their SAT scores, what is the fair and equitable method of picking the 100 students that get admitted for the upcoming year?

Here's what I think a color-blind non-racist equal opportunity minded admission process looks like. Sort the students by SAT score and admit the top 100.

Looking at the comments from the left, by example the Daily Show video jabs above, the process I described is considered a rollback of hard fought civil rights.

???

To be clear, 99% of Americans don't have any problems with socialism as long as they belong to the group getting the handouts.

Case and point, $12 billion in farm welfare to ease the "temporary" (yet to be seen) pain Trump's trade war is causing farmers (so much for free market economics). You won't find any Republican farmers turning that money down just because they hate socialism, but those same people denounce welfare for the un and under employed, the hungry, and the homeless as harmful and unAmerican.

As to affirmative action, keep in mind the specific case mentioned was about reversing sexual discrimination too, not just race and class. How, exactly, they think public institutions can achieve the diversity of genders and races many are required by law to achieve without looking at gender or race is beyond me.

It bears noting, the people claiming to hate socialism (but who love our socialist programs like the military) invariably don't think giving the disenfranchised and those denied opportunity preferential treatment is OK....until that includes them.

Interesting point.
Probably because you have much more diversity and social mobility in Canada, less segregation.
Affirmative action is a strange concept but American society seems to be finding it hard to find other ways to reverse deepening class and race segregation.
Strange that they have such a problem with socialism (essentially giving poor people money, education and health services), while giving minorities preferential treatment is OK.

This is needless escalation.

First, yeah, a joke on a tv show doesn't warrant a letter from an Ambassador, and is needlessly escalating things.

Next though, Noah's response is unwarranted too, and is needlessly escalating again. Worse still, Noah goes for the throat against the ambassador implying that the ambassador is party to the problem of calling troublesome immigrants African and successful ones simply French.

So, I googled Gerard Araud for a minute to see what I could about where he stood on immigration. That came to the link below after a round of Islamic terrorist attacks within France.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/01/14/377262623/french-ambassador-to-u-s-outlines-predicament-of-immigration

"France is a country of 65 million inhabitants. There are between 5 and 6 million Muslims. And I guess 99.9 percent of Muslims are peaceful citizens. All the polls are showing their commitment to France. They are French; most of them are born in our country. So the message that we have to send to them is, they are part of the nation. They are a full part of the nation."

So he seems like an ally who already unequivocally put himself out there fully supporting (largely Arab and African)Muslims in the heat of a terrorist attack 3 years ago. So, not so much a fair whether friend only embracing French citizens of diverse backgrounds when they are champions, but in the much much harder time when the press coverage was terrifically negative.

So, the face value reason for the Ambassador's letter of not legitimising the neo-nazi right notion that true French citizens are "white/christian" looks absolutely his true intent.

The escalation here is not to be celebrated, it is needless division between people with the same good cause. The racists don't need the help of the rest of us fighting with one another.

I recently watched an award winning documentary about fungi that mentioned this phenomenon.

Fungi is the third form of life but is sadly not as well known as flora and fauna, as it is every bit as diverse and fascinating as them both.

2001's Ocean's 11 had a bunch of racially and culturally diverse characters as well. Did you whine about it then too? Or were you not as edgy back then?

Are we supposed to just keep everything white and straight to "keep it real" and make you comfortable? MORE THAN ONE BLACK CHICK??? STOP THE MADNESS!

Warriors against SJW are more annoying that SJWs themselves. Talk about "snowflakes"...

(Also, I counted only one black chick... ???)

They're really hammering home the whole SJW PC thing arent they? Not subtle about it at all. Typical preachy hollywood.

Lesbian. Check.
More than 1 black chick. Check.
Asian chick. Check.
Australian. Check.
Brit. Check.
Men who are idiots. Check.

Diversity: The Movie.

I originally thought this was just going to be Oceans 11 with women. But oh no, they had to go full-retard. You never go full-retard.

The Diversity of Local Independent News has been added as a related post - related requested by PlayhousePals.

John Oliver - Sinclair Broadcast Group has been added as a related post - related requested by PlayhousePals.

Bill Maher - Boris Epshteyn Interview has been added as a related post - related requested by PlayhousePals.