"Wow! Took a year".- Katherine Clark

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by lurgee.

Question from Canada. Affirmative action isn't something we would normally consider synonymous with civil rights. Is this different in the US across the board?

Up here we generally view laws around equality and civil rights as one issue, and restitution for past injustices as a related but separate issue. It is not simple accepted here that admission, acceptance and hiring practices must meet specific demographic benchmarks although it happens to a lesser and softer degree.

I guess I don't really understand the notion of discrimination based upon race as a solution to civil rights, even more so to here let leaning folks stating it as a matter of course that should be done.

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.

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.

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.

???

That only works if there's equality in lower/mid level education, giving all students a reasonable opportunity for quality education before that SAT testing, and there is not.
Low income district schools are at a distinct disadvantage in funding, facilities, and availability of assistance, as are low income students. Female students have, historically, been discouraged from pursuing science and math, especially at high levels.

Equality of opportunity at least to a reasonably competent base level of education is considered a civil right. Because we are still far from reaching that ideal, rolling back programs designed to address the continued shortfalls IS a rollback of civil right protections in the same way rolling back civil right protections in our election system was a rollback of the voting rights for a large, specifically targeted population which led instantly to attempts to return to old, clearly discriminatory practices designed to deny voting rights.

Surely the solution should rather be to fix the real problem of unequal opportunity in primary education?

Even given disagreement on this, surely the left(you?) can acknowledge that reasonable good minded people could disagree? Surely it's an over-reaction to call people racist for believing that choosing students based upon performance and not race is a good thing? One has to acknowledge that the counter example, of using race before merit as a selection criteria is in fact the very definition of racism?

More importantly to the Democratic party though, allow me to gift them moral justice and rightness on the issue. Even given that, practicality dictates that spending many years with a policies that choose certain people over more qualified others based upon race will create tensions. If you made that policy against say whites, or males, they might develop resentment. One might predict that they may even vote against those imposing that policy, arguably even willingly voting for a kind of racist orange haired loud mouth that they hope will end the policy discriminating against them based upon their race.

You might even argue it's starting to happen already...

1) Yes, but that's much more easily said than done, and many people disagree too. I feel that it's far cheaper to pay to educate other people's children (I have none) and have them become far more productive citizens than it is to insist (despite all evidence to the contrary) that hard work overcomes all obstacles, and everyone is capable of doing the work required for success. This theory removes responsibility to help others and puts blame squarely on those who've failed. Convenient, but just wrong.

2) In a vacuum, that makes sense, but not in real life. The refusal to acknowledge the disparities in opportunity to prepare for that singular performance is where the racism lies.
It's actually illegal to use just race over performance merit in most places as I understand it. Ethnicity/gender are usually only one small part of the equation. If they could be replaced with a numerical opportunity score, used to modify performance scores,
I would support that, but good luck figuring that one out to anyone's satisfaction.

3) Yes, people always resent being forced from a position of power. I do think it's important to constantly revisit the issue to insure policy doesn't foster inequities, particularly since that's the point of the policies, eradicating inequities.

4) Predicting the naive would be suckered by a professional con man telling them platitudes, sure, but predicting so many of the educated would go along for short sighted, purely tribal reasoning, that's tougher.

5) Certain groups of people have been claiming white men are the downtrodden powerless whipping boys since the 60's. It's getting closer to true, but we aren't near there yet, it just seems that way to those less socially powerful than their fathers. Sure, there are outliers where the white male gets the shaft due to race, but we still come out well ahead in the balance by any objective set of criteria..

@newtboy

Your being dishonest and unfair to people with stuff like this:
"predicting so many of the educated would go along for short sighted, purely tribal reasoning, that's tougher."
and
"people have been claiming white men are the downtrodden powerless whipping boys.

I saw an op-ed in the nytimes back when the supreme court nomination was hot and had hoped the author's opinion were a minority. Segments of this Daily Show clip and your own feedback make rethink that. The op-ed wanted to concisely show how dangerously right wing and extremist current Justice Roberts was. To do this, the author stated that the Justice own chilling rationale for one of his decisions should tell us everything we need to know about him: "To stop discrimination based upon race, we need to stop discriminating based upon race"

Being insulting and dismissive of people's frustrations at being racially discriminated against as your post appears to do just makes for more division still.

Try reading again. You have it totally backwards.

When was I insulting or dismissive? Because it was unforseen that educated people would elect a bombastic insulting sexist popularist con man who was obviously lying to them simply because he wore a red hat and tie? Those are facts, not opinion. Many of them are saying how much they regret it now.

I offered solutions you appeared to agree with, like funding lower education so everyone has a decent, if not equal, opportunity to get an education.
Using race as ONE criteria amongst many for admission is not ideal, as I said, but until a better system for identifying and addressing financial and societal issues that stymie opportunities for people often based on their pigmentation is created, it's the best we've got.

What we don't have is what you imply is the problem.....rich white men with 1570 SAT scores (old school SAT, I don't know how it's scored now) and 3.9 gpas are not being turned away from Yale to make room for indigent African American women with 990 SATs and 2.7 gpas...but the Latina woman with 1550 and 3.6 gpa earned while raising 2 siblings and holding a full time job, yeah, she gets the slot, and that's proper. One skewed test that benefits one privileged group is hardly a decent measure of their work ethic or intelligence....often it's only an indication they hired the right student to take the SAT for them. There were at least 3 hired test takers out of 30 students taking the PSAT when I took it, we talked afterwards.

It is the right (and people making the arguments you are) who are far more insulting and dismissive of non white people's frustrations at being racially discriminated against....to a level and consistency exponentially higher than the trifling discriminations whites suffer. That doesn't mean some whites don't suffer some deleterious effects, it means they come out way ahead in the discrimination game.

You wish to ignore 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....but only the kind that harms white guys, forget the myriad of insurmountable racist mountains non whites climb daily, both institutional and societal, this speed bump for whites is unconscionable and must be removed immediately!

Come back and whine about institutional anti white bias when anti white racism permeates every facet of your life but not when your race doesn't give you a free leg up that one time. Maybe talk to your right wing friends about why funding education for others is good for you as step one towards eliminating programs like this that address inequities in opportunities, and giving the less fortunate extra opportunity to overcome their situation is good for all. After reasonable basic educational opportunities are available for all, schools will still take the student's home life, finances, and extra curricular activities into account....with luck that will be on an individual basis eventually, but that's not likely until education reforms occur that give everyone an opportunity to display their skills on a more level field..

@newtboy said;
"You wish to ignore 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...."

No I don't. I never said that, you're the one that said anyone objecting to affirmative action is like that. At least I presume that's what you meant by: "short sighted, purely tribal reasoning"

I question the process for applications for jobs, grants, university/college or other places. If one has a color blind computational method of creating a qualification score for candidates, how do we most fairly use that score to choose candidates.

My view: Sort the candidates by qualification score and take the top ones.

Tell me if I understand your view right or not.
I understand your view as: Some times or to some extent, higher scoring candidates should be disregarded for other lower scoring candidates based upon race.

Please correct me if I misunderstand that.

Also, anywhere else that race is similarly systematically used to discriminate against people should of course be equally corrected. Again, I'm not American, are there other parallel examples of law and process that check for your race and replace you with lower scoring people because of it? You accused me of only looking at "the kind that harms white guys", but the reality is I only know of this example of law and regulation written specifically addressing race as something that must be used to raise/lower the scoring of candidates. Are there other direct examples?

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.

Fine, as long as that score takes effort required to achieve that score into account.

A poor inner city kid with a single parent living in public housing, working a job, raising a sibling must be more intelligent and harder working by far to achieve the same score as a kid in Los Altos Hills with top rated schools (including programs designed to help them on the specific test), a large stable and safe home with servants, tons of free time, tutors, and the ability to just pay someone to take the test. If the former scores 1500 and the latter 1510, you would take the latter, obviously the lesser student. This is usually (not invariably) a function of race. Ignoring that is a form of racism...call it racism once removed.

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

"Objecting to using race as one of many criteria for admission in favor of a single test that clearly benefits your group..."
I see the misunderstanding, I specifically did not ask for a test benefiting a group, but instead specifically asked for one that did NOT. I'll quote myself again:"a color blind computational method of creating a qualification score for candidates."

Since the school admission examples seem to be encouraging misunderstanding, let's change fields. The NBA draft doesn't come down to a single score, but it does have a best effort by professional experts to select the top candidates based upon ability and projected ability at the sport of basketball. By all appearances, that process could be said to "clearly benefit 'a' group", but because I am confident the process is color blind and selecting candidates based upon ability I like it.

To introduce race as a consideration instead is racism, period. You can argue that fighting racism with racism is justified or even desirable, but at least have the honestly to call it that.

You mentioned SAT scores, no? They clearly DO benefit one group, rich whites.
You said "If one has a color blind computational method of creating a qualification score for candidates, how do we most fairly use that score to choose candidates." I pointed out that we don't have any such method, offered some of the reasons why the SAT is biased, and made suggestions of some things that must be taken into account to create one.

Edit: any method that ignores the exceptional efforts required in overcoming the pitfalls of being non white in America in order to be color blind, by definition, cannot be used fairly.

Yeah, that's honest, move to a profession where one single specific type of performance is the entire job, then claim it's possible to rate other jobs the same way. If the job can be boiled down to something as simple as how many times you can score a basket in one hour and NOTHING else matters, that works. There are very few professions like that, and educational opportunities should be nothing like that, especially when there's no unbiased test to determine intelligence, educational ability, and work ethic.

Side note: there have been some who suggested affirmative action in sports, requiring a certain number of white players on teams. Indeed, there were white leagues that fought tooth and nail to not let even the most talented non whites participate. Just sayin....

Race is considered, period. The argument is that being non white should be considered as a positive, an obstacle being overcome, rather than a negative, a biased excuse to deny opportunity.

@newtboy,
"Yeah, that's honest, move to a profession where one single specific type of performance is the entire job..."

Take any highly competitive field and you've got similar professional grading based upon excellence in the field. Legal, Medical, Engineering, the same kind of professionals can be found hunting for top tier talent in any of these, no different than the NBA. Their criteria can be every bit as colour blind and there is strong economic incentives to do so to boot.

"Side note: there have been some who suggested affirmative action in sports, requiring a certain number of white players on teams. Indeed, there were white leagues that fought tooth and nail to not let even the most talented non whites participate. Just sayin...."
And that would be racist, and it was wrong, and it's something we should be glad to be rid of.

Just sayin....

"Race is considered, period."
Reasonable, non-racist people are going to disagree with you. They are going to, correctly, call your policy racist.

Can you really not see the other side that thinks fighting racism with racism is the wrong approach?

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.

Because it seems important to you to hear, yes, anything dealing with race is, by one definition, racist.

....but....

Just like discrimination, that's not necessarily bad.
Discrimination just means noticing a difference just like racism can mean making any distinction by race. Most definitions include prejudice and superiority as parts of racism, but not all. Discrimination by itself is not bad, it's discriminating against someone (especially based on racial assumptions) that's considered wrong.

Racism-the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race.

That characteristic could be nothing more than pigmentation levels, a physical characteristic with no other connotations or prejudices attached....it's still technically racism. E.g.. it's racist and discriminatory to state that Americans of African descent are at risk for sickle cell anemia, but not malicious or prejudicial.

People who claim to be 100% non-racist are liars, blind and deaf, or 100% brain dead. Reasonable people admit they see race, even those who don't discriminate against others based on race.

@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.

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.

This appears to be the gist of the argument. I hate to be that guy, stepping aside for someone who works harder yet cant beat my score. Its nice to help other people but not by shooting yourself in the foot.

Understood, and I agree, it's never nice to be the loser, and is worse when you lose because you're forced to accept a handicap. (I mean the golf term)
I would guess that's how many minorities feel too....constantly handicapped.

Enjoying the discussion in the comment thread *quality discussion

This video has already declared quality - ignoring quality request by eric3579.

@newtboy,
without racial preferencing FOR white kids
I know for a fact though that in Canada any law, policy or practice that in any way, shape or form stated that has been abolished long ago. Any new ones would be destroyed in court immediately and without question. I've always understood the US to be the same, is that not correct? Is there anywhere in existence in US law, or policies that discrimination based upon race, outside of affirimative action, is ever allowed to exist?

I was convinced enough that the US was like Canada in this regard that back when Obama was president I had someone tell me about a Breitbart report claiming anti-white racism being dictated directly from the President's office. I barely bothered to look for evidence to disprove such a blatant lie from a known extremist propaganda rag. It's hard to express my shock/discouragement to hear that very same refrain, not from a right winger, but from the sources on the left adamant about the necessity of it...

I don't know how else to say this without repeating myself, but you can't achieve equality with racism. It is a situation where even if you are right, your still wrong. Putting actual race based discrimination into official party policy, and now apparently even into law is no longer something society is willing to tolerate. Doubly so when their children are the ones being discriminated against. The people will vote you out of office. You can kiss swing states goodbye. They will stack the Supreme Court against you to challenge and throw out the discriminatory law as unconstitutional.

You are fighting a battle you can not win. You are wrong to think that solving the problem of underfunded schools in bad socioeconomic regions is the harder nut to crack. Maintaining a law and systematic racism against whites to 'balance' the lack of opportunity is much harder, it's being dismantled already because people will not tolerate it. Demanding that university's open up XX spots for socioeconomically disadvantaged kids, regardless of race is already normal practice here in Canada and everyone can get on board. Doing it for race though, humans just don't work that way. The only times that's been successfully maintained is through force of numbers or military strength.

Great discussion guys - one of the best I've seen on the 'sift for a while. Thanks for the perspective and civility, you've educated a few of us who are less familiar with the topic. Kudos.

What I mentioned was couched as a quota/limit for Asian kids, not an advantage for white ones. It might not still exist, it was a while back and I'm well out of school.

Yes, reservations allow discrimination based on heritage.

Yeah, don't listen to people who watch breitbart, Fox, or Jones. Just walk away, they're either insane, liars, or dupes.

The racism you complain about is only meant to mitigate the racist policies and reality those students suffer from because we aren't working to end it. Like I said on your profile, we are making the disparities bigger here by defunding programs that do help and are mostly means based, not race based. We're idiots.

I think you need to stop thinking in terms of what you think society will tolerate. You should talk for yourself, maybe your group, but society will tolerate more than you could imagine. The groups getting the assistance tolerated FAR more than someone cutting the line at college. You forget, it's society that created these plans, not some outside group forcing them on you.

I'm not wrong, these programs are decades old with no revolution starting because of them, and there's less effort to crack that nut daily.

There's no racist law against whites here, only a few programs benefiting other groups. You can claim that's against whites, but then you must admit the totality of law and society is against minorities....at least here.

Not true here....sorry. we've survived giving disadvantaged groups a leg up for quite some time, and haven't resorted to using the military to enforce it since desegregation in the 60's.