Affirmative Action

[Darth Wong]

My own college experience told me diversity wasn't all that important to colleges; all the blacks were in the African-American center, the women were in the women's center, and the homosexuals were in the LGBT center. A segregationist would have fucking loved it. (Interestingly, there was no men's center, which is a massive violation of Title IX, but there you go. ) Regardless, where university admissions are concerned, someone with the resources and ability to get in and stay in will do so, skin color notwithstanding.

You have actual physical buildings where minorities are segregated in your university? What the fuck university was this, and how is this remotely permissible or acceptable?

You can easily make a case for affirmative action in hiring (and prosecute the fuck out of anyone who refuses to hire people due to their race), but in university admissions? Why should a poor, inner city white kid get a big ol' fuck you when he needs help paying for his education while an affluent black or Hispanic student gets scholarships reserved for people of his skin color? If the end goal is equality of opportunity, that sure is a fucked up way of showing it.

Who said anything about scholarships for rich kids? That's obviously a loophole, which someone took advantage of. That does NOT speak to the basic idea of affirmative action.

[ArmorPierce]

You can easily make a case for affirmative action in hiring (and prosecute the fuck out of anyone who refuses to hire people due to their race), but in university admissions? Why should a poor, inner city white kid get a big ol' fuck you when he needs help paying for his education while an affluent black or Hispanic student gets scholarships reserved for people of his skin color? If the end goal is equality of opportunity, that sure is a fucked up way of showing it.

I don't know why an economical problem should be compared with a racism problem. Yes, there should be a program to help people with economical need and there should be one to address the racism problem. Besides, what does scholarships from private agencies have to do with affirmative action?

[Lusankya]

I don't know much about aboriginal policies in Australia. Here in Canada, it's a mess: we give them a bunch of money and put them on reservations, with the condition that the money train stops if they leave the reservations and try to live like the rest of us. In effect, we pay them to stay away from us. This whole concept should be scrapped IMO; if the native reserves are viable, they should be able to survive without daily handouts from the federal government. If not, their residents should be treated like any other Canadian citizen.

One of the big issues with Aboriginal policies is that to a large extent, they don't seem to take advantage of the generic programs. A large portion of the aborignies in Adelaide just spend the whole day drunk and live in tents in the parklands. Then they complain when the council creates a dry zone so that they don't have drunken eyesores constantly in the middle of the city and when the council moves their tents off of council property. It's not as though resources don't exist. Adelaide's a capital city. We have drug abuse assistance; we have welfare housing; and we have plenty of Centrelink offices (where aborignes get money). It's just that for some reason they don't utilise these resources.

Now, granted it's up to them to utilise these resources once they're available, but given that aborigines are overrepresented with these problems, it would seem to me that you have to have one program out there that's tailored especially for aborigines so that you're not simply failing one segment of society. If it were just the adults drinking themselves to death I wouldn't consider it to be such an issue, but these people have children as well.

[brianeyci]

I find it funny how people like to pretend that racism does not exist any longer and that "racism" (affirmative action) in order to combat racism is inherently wrong and then they try to pulling on the string of idioms such as "It suggests that they need help" or "it suggests that they are inherently inferior" or other such dumb shit. They seem to think that the only reason for affirmative action is economical and if the economic problem was taken away there would be no problem.

Moreover, the point completely sails over the head of people like Bubble Boy. The point of mentioning that whites are in positions of management even though they are the minority in certain jurisdictions is that racism is here to stay and has absolutely nothing to do with statistics or representation. Nobody likes to admit it, but there may be a biological basis for racism: evolution predeposes humans to like more physically attractive and particularly attention grabbing physical attributes like blond hair, light skin, and so on.

But just because there's a biological basis, just like there may be a biological basis for anti-gay sentiments, that doesn't mean humans can't rise above their biology. But this requires active policies to combat instinct, and let's face it: most people act through instinct or habit without thinking, and might not even know it. If a company does not have an equal opportunity policy, human resources managers can easily bullshit their way into hiring a whole bunch of whatever ethnicity they want, and it's hard to call them out on it.

[brianeyci]

My own college experience told me diversity wasn't all that important to colleges; all the blacks were in the African-American center, the women were in the women's center, and the homosexuals were in the LGBT center. A segregationist would have fucking loved it. (Interestingly, there was no men's center, which is a massive violation of Title IX, but there you go. ) Regardless, where university admissions are concerned, someone with the resources and ability to get in and stay in will do so, skin color notwithstanding.

You can easily make a case for affirmative action in hiring (and prosecute the fuck out of anyone who refuses to hire people due to their race), but in university admissions? Why should a poor, inner city white kid get a big ol' fuck you when he needs help paying for his education while an affluent black or Hispanic student gets scholarships reserved for people of his skin color? If the end goal is equality of opportunity, that sure is a fucked up way of showing it.

1. The whole point of college is to expose yourself to different world views. Different races help in that.

2. Just because there's cliques where black people hang around black people or whites around whites or asians around asians, that doesn't mean there aren't multi-racial groups around the college.

3. It is generally impossible to prosecute anybody for racism, especially hiring managers. Did you know that companies with under fifteen people are completely exempt from making reasonable accomodation for disabled people for economic reasons? Similar loopholes exist everywhere and making a solid case of discrimination is often not worth the time or effort. Active hiring policies are far more effective. Any company which has "Equal opportunity employer" in its hiring posts are the ones you want to work for.

4. The same reasoning can be used for university admissions as for hiring: simply waiting for the racism to happen and prosecuting is not good enough, since legal solutions rarely work. This is an attitude problem and cultural attitudes don't lend themselves well to legal solutions. Loopholes don't really count.

[Surlethe]

Is there any hard evidence that there is an intrinsic selection bias?

You are seriously suggesting that racism has been conquered in America? A place where racism is so widespread that in many regions, interracial dating is still considered wrong?

For the sake of playing the skeptic, yes. The sort of idealistic person I'm talking about would insist that racism itself is not as widespread as you suggest. While I disagree, I'm at a loss as to how to convince this idealistic person that racism is alive and well in the US.

I'm curious because I've frankly never seen any, and the assumption is all too common that America is a pure meritocracy with status in life completely determined by hard work and uninfluenced by socioeconomic status or race.

There is certainly plenty of evidence for racism itself. It seems fairly straightforward to conclude that in the presence of racism, racial bias in hiring would also be present. I don't know how you're going to collect statistical data on racial selection bias in hiring since there's no way to get reliable data on it. The people who do hiring certainly aren't going to check off "preferred applicant because he's white" on a survey.

That makes sense. Would an AA program targeted at areas in the country where racism is most prevalent make more sense than a general one? If in a given region, racism is practically nonexistent, then there should be little of the accompanying selection bias, making AA pointless.

[Rogue 9]

My own college experience told me diversity wasn't all that important to colleges; all the blacks were in the African-American center, the women were in the women's center, and the homosexuals were in the LGBT center. A segregationist would have fucking loved it. (Interestingly, there was no men's center, which is a massive violation of Title IX, but there you go. ) Regardless, where university admissions are concerned, someone with the resources and ability to get in and stay in will do so, skin color notwithstanding.

You have actual physical buildings where minorities are segregated in your university? What the fuck university was this, and how is this remotely permissible or acceptable?

They're not segregated by the rules; the centers I mentioned are departments of the university set up to help the groups their names indicate with problems they may have; it's part of many major universities' affirmative action programs. The trouble comes because the centers, by their very existence, encourage self-segregation; this is unintentional, but the law of unintended consequences is a cast-iron bitch. Were all blacks/Hispanics/etc separate from the general population outside of class? Of course not, but a large chunk of them were and for precisely this reason.

Who said anything about scholarships for rich kids? That's obviously a loophole, which someone took advantage of. That does NOT speak to the basic idea of affirmative action.

True, but it's a loophole that tells its recipients that no matter how well off they may actually be, they still need help because of their skin color.

[Lusankya]

True, but it's a loophole that tells its recipients that no matter how well off they may actually be, they still need help because of their skin color.

Do you think that Joe Sixpack, the Southern Apologist from Alabama will look at a rich black kid and say decide not to be racist to him because he happens to be rich?

Like it or not, in today's society, there are certain groups of people (such as blacks) who are less well off than white people from the exact same socio-economic situation simply because their skin is the wrong colour and they suffer from racism.

So yes some people do need help because of their skin colour, because sometimes their skin colour is all it takes for them to lose a position.

[RIPP_n_WIPE]

You can easily make a case for affirmative action in hiring (and prosecute the fuck out of anyone who refuses to hire people due to their race), but in university admissions? Why should a poor, inner city white kid get a big ol' fuck you when he needs help paying for his education while an affluent black or Hispanic student gets scholarships reserved for people of his skin color? If the end goal is equality of opportunity, that sure is a fucked up way of showing it.

I don't know why an economical problem should be compared with a racism problem. Yes, there should be a program to help people with economical need and there should be one to address the racism problem. Besides, what does scholarships from private agencies have to do with affirmative action?

I believe the correlation comes from the fact that people from racial minorities generally are poorer than their racial majority counterparts. They thus receive poorer quality education and can not compete with their fellows for universities and subsequently for jobs.

[ArmorPierce]

Moreover, the point completely sails over the head of people like Bubble Boy. The point of mentioning that whites are in positions of management even though they are the minority in certain jurisdictions is that racism is here to stay and has absolutely nothing to do with statistics or representation. Nobody likes to admit it, but there may be a biological basis for racism: evolution predeposes humans to like more physically attractive and particularly attention grabbing physical attributes like blond hair, light skin, and so on.

You are assuming that white people are inherently more "pretty" than black people. I find the opposite to be true. I find that the average black girl is better looking than the average white girl.

You biological basis does have some credence to it. People evolved to find the norm to be the most beautiful. If they are mostly are exposed to white people, than they would find the white look to be the norm.