Double standards on meritocracy

[mr friendly guy]

Saw this TYT video in my subscriptions today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNHduK5nNo4

I decided to see if I can find articles talking about it, and found that this news is at least one month old.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/1 ... 50312.html

White People Support Academic Meritocracy When It Benefits Them, Study Suggests

Do white people only support traditional definitions of meritocracy when it benefits them? A new study suggests so.

University of Miami professor Frank L. Samson looked at the idea of meritocracy through the lens of admissions standards in the University of California system. He found that white participants changed their ideas of what was meritocratic based on what benefitted white, as opposed to Asian-American, applicants.

After learning whites made up a majority of students at a school, half of the study's participants were asked to evaluate the importance of academic achievement when they were assessing university applicants. The participants related that universities should place high value on an applicant's standardized test scores and class rank.

Other study participants were told that Asian-Americans are disproportionately admitted to the school. These participants related that less weight should be placed on an applicant's academics.

The study concludes that, “the shift to an Asian American plurality provoked a reaction that caused white evaluators to create an altered standard when weighing the academic merits of college applicants.”

These results come at a time when affirmative action -- designed to further the opportunities of groups that have been historically discriminated against -- is being hotly debated. Some opponents of the practice argue that admissions should simply be based on concrete, meritocratic standards. However, as the study reveals, what is considered meritocratic to some may simply be based on what benefits the group with whom they most identify.

Minority groups are expected to become a majority of America's population by 2042, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. As the study notes, this demographic shift may force universities to learn how to guard “against pressures from the dominant group reacting to a perceived drop from their dominant group position.”

The study, "Altering Public University Admission Standards to Preserve White Group Position in the United States: Results from a Laboratory Experiment," was published in the Comparative Education Review.

Unless the anti-meritocracy group just happened to be racist while the pro-meritocracy group just happened to be not, it has some implications for those who argue against affirmative action.

We may very well find out that white people who call for meritocracy and an end of affirmative action take a different view when they don't score so highly against minorities in terms of scores (what we use to decided merit). If its true, its hypocrisy at its finest.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

The funny thing about that dichotomy you're setting up is, affirmative action is actually PRO-meritocracy, since it's put in to counteract the biases that allow underqualified privileged people to get spots ahead of more qualified oppressed people.

[SMJB]

Question: Is the anti-meritocracy group arguing against meritocracy or are they actually redefining it? Because, and I'm just playing devil's advocate here, if it's the former it could still be argued that a pure meritocratic system would work better than affirmative action.

[Mr Bean]

Question: Is the anti-meritocracy group arguing against meritocracy or are they actually redefining it? Because, and I'm just playing devil's advocate here, if it's the former it could still be argued that a pure meritocratic system would work better than affirmative action.

In theory yes but that assumes an equivalent base starting place. But little Johhny, Little Lee and Little Archbald Summerhall the 7th don't all start at the same schools. If little Johnny made the mistake of living in a city he might spend twelve years in an education system which could care less about him and the other thirty six people in each of the classrooms at school with text books still warning about how the Soviets would be a problem for us for years to come.

Even little Lee won't be able to compete with Little Archbald Summerhall the 7th if the old boys running the college change "academic achievement" to emphasis non academics. Busted your ass 14 hours a day to get perfect grades at your school? Sucks to be you because the other A and high B students have just as much weight as you do for your good grades but since you worked so hard at school you get deducted points for not having outside activities.

[mr friendly guy]

The funny thing about that dichotomy you're setting up is, affirmative action is actually PRO-meritocracy, since it's put in to counteract the biases that allow underqualified privileged people to get spots ahead of more qualified oppressed people.

The point is, even under the standards the anti AA people profess, they fail and will try to break it contrary to the reasons they claim AA is bad.

[energiewende]

Unless the anti-meritocracy group just happened to be racist while the pro-meritocracy group just happened to be not, it has some implications for those who argue against affirmative action.

More so people who argue in favour of it, surely? Whites here are just saying they want affirmative action too because East Asians are "too" successful. Unless you think whites fundamentally think differently than blacks and Hispanics, this is to be expected.

It's also worth pointing out that current affirmative action in the US discriminates more strongly against East Asians than it does against whites. What the people who 'switch sides' on the AA question are advocating is the status quo, so if you think they are wrong and their motives are selfish, that's not a strong endorsement of AA.

The point is, even under the standards the anti AA people profess, they fail and will try to break it contrary to the reasons they claim AA is bad.

I'm not sure however that it is fair to equate "opponents of AA" with "whites". Whites were a dominant majority in the US when affirmative action was introduced, so AA must have been supported primarily by whites.

[mr friendly guy]

The argument is dependent on some whites arguing against AA, so I do equate to some extent opponents of AA with whites. Clearly not all do oppose AA, but generally from what little I know of, the vocal opponents of AA are white conservatives. Sure the study could have gotten all whites who aren't conservative in the group arguing for AA when the shoe is on the other foot, but it seems unlikely if the bothered to do the usual random selection etc.

Also its worth noting by your very argument, that if what whites are arguing is for the status quo, then they shouldn't pretend to argue against AA on the grounds that meritocracy is what matters (when denying AA granted places to say blacks). They should come out and say it. For one thing, if we assume what they say is their true argument, it kind of falls if you think their true reason is to maintain the status quo.

[energiewende]

It's to be expected people are more in favour of policies that serve their self-interest. This is openly argued most of the time, eg. that you should vote for tax rises for other people to pay for improved services for yourself. That is a perfectly respectable argument that you can make on TV.

What I'm not so clear on is why it's unreasonable to expect whites not to extend the AA logic when they are faced with a group that's academically better than they are. This research is presented as showing that whites are horrible mercenaries who care more about themselves than others, but what's more likely is that people care more about themselves than others. Why is AA strongly supported among blacks and Hispanics, which are groups that do much worse compared to whites than whites do compared to Asians? This research suggests self-interest. So I don't see that it attacks the argument for meritocracy. It may show that some people currently arguing for meritocracy are only using it as a smoke screen to push their own interest - but it also suggests that some of people arguing against meritocracy in the past were doing so only because it serves their self-interest, not because they think meritocracy is unjust.

The choice of Asians is an especially interesting one. It's hard to argue that Asians are less "historically discriminated against" by the US than Hispanics (to the extent either are), yet AA means Asians suffer a big penalty compared to whites while Hispanics are given a big boost. Would an Asian group insist on admission purely on the basis of standardized tests, an approach that is used in a number of Asian countries? If so, does that demonstrate that they are dishonest sham-meritocrats who want to preserve their "dominant group position"?

[mr friendly guy]

What I'm not so clear on is why it's unreasonable to expect whites not to extend the AA logic when they are faced with a group that's academically better than they are. This research is presented as showing that whites are horrible mercenaries who care more about themselves than others, but what's more likely is that people care more about themselves than others. Why is AA strongly supported among blacks and Hispanics, which are groups that do much worse compared to whites than whites do compared to Asians? This research suggests self-interest. So I don't see that it attacks the argument for meritocracy. It may show that some people currently arguing for meritocracy are only using it as a smoke screen to push their own interest - but it also suggests that some of people arguing against meritocracy in the past were doing so only because it serves their self-interest, not because they think meritocracy is unjust.

Isn't that what I said?

If you want x because of reasons a,b,c, you should outright say it, instead of saying we want it for reasons d,e,f. Because it wastes a lot of time if the opponent demonstrates condition d,e,f are satisfied, only for the person to say nah nah nah because they really want a,b,c to be satisfied. Not only does it waste time, its blatantly dishonest and makes it hard to have a conversation with them if their default state is to use smoke screens as you say.

[Dominus Atheos]

Can someone who know a little more about research papers look at this and tell me by what percentage whites changed their answers?

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/di ... id=8935434

I tried looking at it, but I can't make heads or tails of it.

[energiewende]

What I'm not so clear on is why it's unreasonable to expect whites not to extend the AA logic when they are faced with a group that's academically better than they are. This research is presented as showing that whites are horrible mercenaries who care more about themselves than others, but what's more likely is that people care more about themselves than others. Why is AA strongly supported among blacks and Hispanics, which are groups that do much worse compared to whites than whites do compared to Asians? This research suggests self-interest. So I don't see that it attacks the argument for meritocracy. It may show that some people currently arguing for meritocracy are only using it as a smoke screen to push their own interest - but it also suggests that some of people arguing against meritocracy in the past were doing so only because it serves their self-interest, not because they think meritocracy is unjust.

Isn't that what I said?

If you want x because of reasons a,b,c, you should outright say it, instead of saying we want it for reasons d,e,f. Because it wastes a lot of time if the opponent demonstrates condition d,e,f are satisfied, only for the person to say nah nah nah because they really want a,b,c to be satisfied. Not only does it waste time, its blatantly dishonest and makes it hard to have a conversation with them if their default state is to use smoke screens as you say.

But it applies both ways - many supporters of affirmative action are likely using their criticism of meritocracy as a smoke screen to serve their self-interest, ie. be admitted to programs of study for which they are not qualified.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Yes, yes, it applies perfectly both ways.

A system set up to counteract existing, empirically-demonstrated biases being attacked because people think of the current system that favours them as "normal" and "right" is exactly the same as said system being supported by people who lose out on so many opportunities because of those biases.

I can't see any difference between the two and so they must be the same both ways right?

[Carinthium]

Only going to criticise Mr Bean's first post here.

Say hypothetically that there are 3 candidates for a job. Candiate A would be the best qualified in a fair system, as they have worked by far the hardest and have by far the most innate capability. However, they came from a disadvantaged background and so are overall inferior to Canidate B, who did work but not as hard (If this is a university, assume that, not because of talent but B's privledged background, he would come out the smarter at the end). Candidate C didn't work as hard as either and is not as smart as either, but has connections and is white.

I sympathise with and to an extent agree with those who say that Candidate C should be excluded through an affirmative action system. If a government is to exist at all, I have no qualms about the government using affirmiative action to help rule out people such as Candidate C.

Yes it's unfair, however, but Candidate A should not get the job. For companies this should be obvious- private companies have a moral duty to their shareholders, not their workers or their prospective workers. For universities, Candidate B is going to be more useful to society. Candidate B IS the smarter candidate, innate potential be damned.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

I don't think you understand how affirmative action even works?

[Covenant]

I don't think you understand how affirmative action even works?

I think it's fairly certain he doesn't know how it works.

First off, there's not just one system for how this operates. Affirmative Action in the states is more of a stated "goal" rather than a methodology, and usually only at the state level. You'll see companies that try to foster diversity, but this is rarely a federally enforced thing. People worried that they're missing out on jobs because there's too many other white folks in the company are frankly idiotic. They're also falling into the Disabled Parking Spot fallacy. If there was indeed an open spot to be filled, the great likelihood is that it wouldn't have been filled by them, the person so low on the list that they got bumped off.

Now, some implementations of Affirmative Action are shitty and racist in their own way, particularly when they're just doing it because they have to and don't really seek any kind of outreach. But as a concept the mechanics of Affirmative Action are to counter-balance an institutional bias against individuals from a wide spectrum of disfavored socio-economic backgrounds. That's a fancy way of saying "poor people and the prejudiced against" but it's a fair way of doing it. Affirmative Action, even without any nod towards color, is still a good way of helping people pull themselves up with a bit of extra help. Sometimes that little bit of extra help, the "Give me a chance!" kind of help, is what you need to help break people out of cycles of perpetual failure and perpetual underclass status.

Society as a whole benefits more from Candidate A, who is hard working and has a real desire for success, than they do from Candidate B, who is resting on the laurels of his forebears and past achievements. Having a more advantaged background is just as much of a shitty reason to get ahead as being a white guy with connections. If we have two identical black candidates, one from a wealthy family that has complete integration with American cultural norms and another from a single parent, four sibling household in a cruddy section of Detroit, I'm absolutely going to give the nod to the poor kid from the shitty background. Even if they score a little lower on the chart, for fuck's sake, look where they started! The vector of that success certainly shows a higher upward trending than the guy who is basically just treading water. Univerisites and Corporations really like go-getters and self-starters who are able to do something with their lives. If all you can do is sluggishly walk forwards with some degree of socially mandated torpor, then you suck and you deserve to be bumped down.

Why? Because you're not working hard enough.

Now what's the result from this. Is the fallout that Candidate B misses out on an opportunity? Oh poor baby! They're apparently highly qualified, with great intellectual and personal resources, and a comfortable privileged background! What will they do?

Oh wait, maybe they could get off their ass, turn up the "give a shit" meter a bit, and work for it?

Assuming that Candidate B decides he cares about his own success, with the degree of qualification they are told to have, they will succeed. They'll find some way to break in because a person with good skills, qualifications and personal resources can afford to miss an opportunity or two when they're finding an egress into society. Of all the things one cannot control in life, like where you start out, your skin color, or the way people treat due to their own idiotic prejudices, the thing you are given the MOST control over is the vigor with which you attack your own stupid problems. We as a society have a self-interest in making your "give a shit" meter one of the most important qualifying characteristics.

In fact, I think what you'd see is that competition among A's and B's in society is good, and it would help B's become advantaged A's in terms of effort. That's great for all of us.

AA implementation may not be perfect, and doing it by race rather than socioeconomic status is a bit stupid, but the idea that someone with good qualifications and zero gut should succeed against someone whose merit is far higher is a kinda goofballery thing to say. Didn't you ever have a teacher who handed a great paper back with a B- and said "This is good, but I know you can do a lot better," just to kick you into actually working at it? If not, I feel sorry for ya'.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

AA implementation may not be perfect, and doing it by race rather than socioeconomic status is a bit stupid

I know I'm just snipping a part of a sentence but I feel this specific thing needs to be addressed, because while it's said a lot as a sort of "rational compromise" position, I disagree with it heavily.

Studies of employability find that race alone has a huge factor in people being hired or promoted. Fictitious applicant studies have found results ranging from a white applicant being twice as likely to land a job than an identical black applicant, white applicants with felony records being more employable than black applicants with no criminal record and all else being equal, and one even found white felon applicants with no degree more hireable than black applicants with a degree and no criminal record! And this is all with affirmative action already in place.

Our society is marbled with massive systemic racist biases, so measures that address it directly are not by themselves stupid.

[Lagmonster]

Studies of employability find that race alone has a huge factor in people being hired or promoted. Fictitious applicant studies have found results ranging from a white applicant being twice as likely to land a job than an identical black applicant, white applicants with felony records being more employable than black applicants with no criminal record and all else being equal, and one even found white felon applicants with no degree more hireable than black applicants with a degree and no criminal record!

I'm not arguing with the idea that problems exist, but I'm curious about these studies. I remember first hearing about the "white names get more callbacks than foreign-sounding names" studies almost twenty years ago. That's damn well near a generation of entirely new voters and job seekers raised in the interim, so I'd like to know if there is evidence that the employability issue is still a seriously unresolved problem.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Here's one I found as I was writing up that post that was done in 2008:

Study: Black man and white felon – same chances for hire

Among those with no criminal record, white applicants were more than twice as likely to receive a callback relative to equally qualified black applicants. Even more troubling, whites with a felony conviction fared just as well, if not better, than a black applicant with a clean background.

[Covenant]

Our society is marbled with massive systemic racist biases, so measures that address it directly are not by themselves stupid.

Conceded.

I think they are inelegant, because they continue a fixation on race, with all the attendant problems therein. I don't think we talk too much about the plight of oppressed peoples in our society, or the reasons they've become targets for oppression, but I feel like all the time we spend talking about "race" only keeps the idea of "race" in our heads as something important or distinguishing. Something that is worth talking about, and would continue to be important even once the problems of racism are past, in the distant future. The nonsensical way we approach people of mildly different skin coloration is, I think, a problem no matter if its done in the racist and superior way or the supposedly empowering way, where it is used as a sloppy way of talking about heritage and culture.

So, because the idea of keeping the term "race" in our popular nomenclature bothers me, I worry that addressing the problem of racial biases directly only enflames the problem. Maybe I'm just gunshy, but I really do think it might be a short term solution with lousy long term complications. Race is a nearly meaningless distinction anyway, and I am not sure but I wonder if the way to get people to stop worrying about race is to eliminate as much of the socioeconomic structure that leads to the cycles of poverty, crime and under-education that trap people of oppressed pigmentation or ethnic background.

But you're right, it's not stupid. And I might be wrong, there might be no better way to fix it than just counter-punching the idiots directly. Sometimes you just gotta take the bitter pill. I would prefer to think we could remove a sloppy "race" entry from the criteria and it would do as good of (or better) a job than it does now by targeting those people who best need the assistance. Black is a color, African-American is just sloppy, how do we help someone of carib origins or a malay with dark skin? They may not be black but they probably get treated like it. I don't know, I just don't like the solution. I support it but I wish we could improve the selection criteria so that it means "disadvantaged blacks and latinos" more than "blacks and latinos."

I also do know of the studies that consistently show that people with white faces and "white" names are more likely to get job offers and a bunch of other favorable treatments. I wasn't trying to say that a strong racial bias didn't exist. When I moved to where I am now (Appalachian Virginia) from where I used to be (Chicago) I was politely steered away from some of the "bad" parts of this quaint little small town by the nice lady who was helping my fiancee and I find apartments on behalf of the Graduate Program my fiancee was entering. Needless to say, the bad parts of town are slightly lower income housing mostly occupied by the town's nearly invisible black population. Nearly invisible in the pretty downtown anyway.

[Simon_Jester]

One thought:

Part of the problem with "bad" parts of town is that some of them really are bad, in that they contain large numbers of muggers, drug addicts, gangsters, and so on. Others are not that bad- but for outsiders it can be hard to tell, so they do their best to avoid the whole region.

[Panzersharkcat]

The study is about seven years old now but I remember one saying the opposite, unless I'm reading it wrongly. It said employers that routinely conducted criminal background checks were more likely to hire African-Americans. Link. I haven't had the chance to read the whole thing; I only heard about this study from a book that mentioned it so I don't know how accurate it is or what criticisms of it are around.
From the abstract:

In this paper, we analyze the effect of employer-initiated criminal background checks on the likelihood that employers hire African Americans. We find that employers who check criminal backgrounds are more likely to hire African American workers, especially men. This effect is stronger among those employers who report an aversion to hiring those with criminal records than among those who do not. We also find similar effects of employer aversion to ex-offenders and their tendency to check backgrounds on their willingness to hire other stigmatized workers, such as those with gaps in their employment history. These results suggest that, in the absence of criminal background checks, some employers discriminate statistically against black men and/or those with weak employment records. Such discrimination appears to contribute substantially to observed employment and earnings gaps between white and black young men.

[Ziggy Stardust]

If you want x because of reasons a,b,c, you should outright say it, instead of saying we want it for reasons d,e,f. Because it wastes a lot of time if the opponent demonstrates condition d,e,f are satisfied, only for the person to say nah nah nah because they really want a,b,c to be satisfied. Not only does it waste time, its blatantly dishonest and makes it hard to have a conversation with them if their default state is to use smoke screens as you say.

To play devil's advocate, this assumes people are being DELIBERATELY dishonest. A lot of these types of hypocrisies/biases are pretty subliminal. I mean, most racists don't go around actively thinking, "Grrr I HATE black people!" They just act different when dealing with black people, often without being completely aware of it.

I am not saying this "excuses" them or makes it any better, and it doesn't change the fact that the situation needs to be adjusted, but I think there is an important categorical difference between deliberate dishonesty and ingrained racist psychology.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Covenant, one thing you talk about there is you feel that race is talked about too much, and that by not talking about it the problem may go away. At least that's how I'm reading it? If that's what you're saying, I heavily disagree.

It's very easy and pretty attractive to talk about ending discussion of race when one is white, because the system is set up with invisible rules massively to your and my benefit, and the unspoken status quo is a nice deal for us. But the problems can't be identified, addressed, and fixed unless there is open and honest discussion about the subject. If you go in "colourblind" and reject the notion of, say, black and white people in America, how are you going to even begin to confront the problems society gives to black people or the advantages given to white people?

What needs to change is that discussion has to stop coming from outside and applied to those within. Race is like any other label: it's best and should only be used as a way for one to identify oneself and find others and should never be applied by someone else to a person. Discussion needs to come from those most affected by racism, and those voices are what should be passed around and seen as authoritative, not the near opposite position that we have at the moment.

[PainRack]

What Covenant is saying is that a fixation on race as a criteria for receiving aid might not be as helpful as targeting other more important factors such as poverty and etc.

And that if you remove the socio-economic factors holding members of minority races back, the major sources of inequality for said minorities would disappear.

Lastly, race as a criteria for targeting aid and anti-discrimination is extremely weak in the US given its diversity and the meaningless of race as a group, and that fixation on race as a criteria may introduce other long term consequences.



We can actually see how such actions DO provoke problems by looking at Malaysia, which has run a successful affirmative action program for decades but has ended up with worse income inequality than the US, a stark divide between racial and relatively weaker divide in socio-economic groups and how fixation on race for affirmative action has ultimately not solved the problem it was designed to fix.

[PainRack]

What I'm not so clear on is why it's unreasonable to expect whites not to extend the AA logic when they are faced with a group that's academically better than they are. This research is presented as showing that whites are horrible mercenaries who care more about themselves than others, but what's more likely is that people care more about themselves than others. Why is AA strongly supported among blacks and Hispanics, which are groups that do much worse compared to whites than whites do compared to Asians? This research suggests self-interest. So I don't see that it attacks the argument for meritocracy. It may show that some people currently arguing for meritocracy are only using it as a smoke screen to push their own interest - but it also suggests that some of people arguing against meritocracy in the past were doing so only because it serves their self-interest, not because they think meritocracy is unjust.

Isn't that what I said?

If you want x because of reasons a,b,c, you should outright say it, instead of saying we want it for reasons d,e,f. Because it wastes a lot of time if the opponent demonstrates condition d,e,f are satisfied, only for the person to say nah nah nah because they really want a,b,c to be satisfied. Not only does it waste time, its blatantly dishonest and makes it hard to have a conversation with them if their default state is to use smoke screens as you say.

The article seems to be claiming that group threat can SHIFT a person viewpoint, rather than whites are playing to their own self interests though.

Based on the article Dominus Atheos posted, he talks about how the hypothesis was framed along Blumer group position theory, which from my fragmented reading of the text talks about how prejudice between various groups is dictated by their social position and relationships.

So, in this case, when whites didn't face a threat to their social group, they were more likely to endorse meritocratic positions than when they faced a threat. This probably explains energiewende posts as well. Any sociologist on the forum willing to comment?