Current Events > How do you feel about affirmative action ending?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Just wondering how people here feel about it.

it's made a lot of "I only behave in a non-sociopathic way when the law/the bible magically compels me to" types go mask-off and that's wholly unsurprising

One thing that stood out to me in regards to the discussion around it ending was how within even my lifetime race based affirmative action had gone from being seen as something that was a temporary measure until underprivileged groups caught up to being seen as something that would be needed forever.

A lot of the hopefulness that led people to imagine that affirmative action would lead to a future where affirmative action wouldn't be needed died before the practice itself did.

Hypocritical because the reason they attacked it is solely to curb Black people from going to college. There was not a peep about legacy admissions and upper-class nepotism that makes up a far greater degree of students in those Ivy League schools.

Solar_Crimson posted...

Hypocritical because the reason they attacked it is solely to curb Black people from going to college. There was not a peep about legacy admissions and upper-class nepotism that makes up a far greater degree of students in those Ivy League schools.

Legacy admissions are in the crosshairs now that race based affirmative action has been banned but the Supreme Court itself didn't have the ability to ban legacy admissions because "legacy" isn't a protected class under the constitution.

Legacy admissions helped specific white students have higher chances of getting into these universities but the practice was particularly damaging to white students that weren't legacies under affirmative action and the data bears that out. White and Asian non legacy students made up a majority of qualified applicants to these schools and also had no thumb on the scale for them in a system where an absolute majority of students did.

I have an extremely negative opinion of it ending. They twisted it to make it sound like some great injustice to white people. But that's not the reality. The reality is, we still have schools and corporations that will skip over qualified individuals because of their race. Sometimes they skip over them after seeing what they look like, sometimes it's as simple as their name. Like oh your name sounds Hispanic, Middle Eastern, Black, etc.? Well good luck not getting skipped over now. There have been studies on that and it's ridiculous that we're still dealing with things like that.

But no, according to them, affirmative action was targeting white people somehow. Because there was no prejudice going on against people of color, nope, not at all

NoxObscuras posted...

I have an extremely negative opinion of it ending. They twisted it to make it sound like some great injustice to white people. But that's not the reality. The reality is, we still have schools and corporations that will skip over qualified individuals because of their race. Sometimes they skip over them after seeing what they look like, sometimes it's as simple as their name. Like oh your name sounds Hispanic, Middle Eastern, Black, etc.? Well good luck not getting skipped over now. There have been studies on that and it's ridiculous that we're still dealing with things like that.

But no, according to them, affirmative action was targeting white people somehow. Because there was no prejudice going on against people of color, nope, not at all

it was about asian people mainly, not white people (in terms of what the argument is)

famfam posted...

it was about asian people mainly, not white people (in terms of what the argument is)

That's what they used to justify it in court, yeah. But I've seen a lot of people on social media talk about how unfair it was for white people getting passed up for opportunities. A lot of that was littered with racism though.

NoxObscuras posted...

That's what they used to justify it in court, yeah. But I've seen a lot of people on social media talk about how unfair it was for white people getting passed up for opportunities. A lot of that was littered with racism though.

The increasing number of Asian students and the decreasing number of white students has changed perceptions of fairness regarding affirmative action.

Affirmative action throughout most of its history has involved white people discriminating in favor of certain minorities by raising their chances of admissions to schools even if that means lowering the odds of admission for white students.

But its just different if the people that are controlling the levers of power are lowering the odds of groups other than their own. Do non Asian groups have the right to lower the odds of admission for Asian students in order to achieve some balance? How much? How can you argue it isn't racial discrimination if people from a racial minority are having their odds of admission slashed for no other reason than that they are lumped into "Asians"?

Not surprised.

Just a reminder that in general, most colleges and universities dont use affirmative action because most schools accept pretty much everyone who applies. Selective universities are a small slice of what college is in America. More people attend Texas A&M and the University of Central Florida than attend every Ivy League institution combined.
Hell, it's been banned in California for like over a decade I believe

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/4/8/AAYofGAAEnyc.png

AA was only ever an excuse to not actually address the racial injustices that caused the acceptance disparities in the first place.

Getting rid of it without addressing those issues is undeniably negative though.

Positively, its not needed anymore

Atralis posted...

The increasing number of Asian students and the decreasing number of white students has changed perceptions of fairness regarding affirmative action.

Affirmative action throughout most of its history has involved white people discriminating in favor of certain minorities by raising their chances of admissions to schools even if that means lowering the odds of admission for white students.

But its just different if the people that are controlling the levers of power are lowering the odds of groups other than their own. Do non Asian groups have the right to lower the odds of admission for Asian students in order to achieve some balance? How much? How can you argue it isn't racial discrimination if people from a racial minority are having their odds of admission slashed for no other reason than that they are lumped into "Asians"?

Conservatives have been trying to stop affirmative action for decades. It's only recently that they switched to the whole "It's hurting Asians" argument to get more support. But admissions for all minorities, including Asians, have gone up in the last 5 decades. The only admissions that have gone down were white people.

emblem-man posted...

Just a reminder that in general, most colleges and universities dont use affirmative action because most schools accept pretty much everyone who applies. Selective universities are a small slice of what college is in America. More people attend Texas A&M and the University of Central Florida than attend every Ivy League institution combined. Hell, it's been banned in California for like over a decade I believe

Eh... It's not accurate to say they accept pretty much everyone. Plenty of students still get rejected. They just accept a ton more students than Ivy League schools do.

Affirmative Action has been banned in California since 1996. And Black and Latino admission fell off a cliff right after it happened. Schools had to take new approaches, like weighing the socio-economic disadvantages of applicants. After that, admission diversity picked up again. So I imagine we'll have to see the same thing on a national scale. Schools develop systems that try to even the playing field without affirmative action. But with no oversight, I can definitely see some schools going back to being 90%+ White.

NoxObscuras posted...

Schools had to take new approaches, like weighing the socio-economic disadvantages of applicants.

Which is a vastly more useful criteria than simply leaning on race.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Which is a vastly more useful criteria than simply leaning on race.

Not sure that's accurate. The effect of race is as large as, and independent of, income:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/7/3/AAZt-XAAEwVt.jpg

There's a good couple of threads that makes a pretty compelling case about the necessity of AA, given the data:

This trend largely hasn't changed since 1995.
https://twitter.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1659419521067675649?t=UHRZ1LIuMNMqdUNCE93eEg&s=19

Same trend exists when you look at parental education:
https://twitter.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1688303725767532544?t=e_fT3-YlZ9P177a0UtCyOg&s=19