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Holding All Else Equal….
Note to the commenters: You can’t defend replacing (as opposed to supplementing) race-based affirmative action with class-based programs by compared rich Blacks to poor Whites. For that claim to be valid, the axis of comparison has to be the equal position of poor Blacks to poor Whites. Otherwise, you’re risking just masking the effects of potential racial discrimination that wealth can “buy off”, but which still become an extra obstacle on top of poverty to poor Blacks without means.
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11 Responses to “Holding All Else Equal….”
Given finite resources for aid to the disadvantaged, I would still rather it be race & gender neutral. But you make a compelling argument.
Thank you for admitting that the University of Michigan and all of the amici briefs were lying when they said that the point of affirmative action programs at universities was about diversity. It has never been about diversity. It has always been about getting even with whites.
The supreme court has ruled many times that group guilt, group punishment, and group benefit are illegal. It the poor blacks can prove that a university, employer, or the state has discrimination then they can seek relief. But to claim some unertain, vague society wide racism as a reason to punish poor whites for being white is one of the the most racist ideas going around these days.
SD, your contention that affirmative action “has always been about getting even with whites.” is a good illustration of my point about people who fail to understand the origins and intent of affirmative action.
Thank you for admitting that the University of Michigan and all of the amici briefs were lying when they said that the point of affirmative action programs at universities was about diversity. It has never been about diversity. It has always been about getting even with whites.
The supreme court has ruled many times that group guilt, group punishment, and group benefit are illegal. It the poor blacks can prove that a university, employer, or the state has discrimination then they can seek relief. But to claim some unertain, vague society wide racism as a reason to punish poor whites for being white is one of the the most racist ideas going around these days.
SD, your contention that affirmative action “has always been about getting even with whites.” is a good illustration of my point about people who fail to understand the origins and intent of affirmative action.
Less importantly, I'm not sure where a not-yet-attendee of the University of Chicago law school gets the authority to make statements as to the intent or argument of the University of Michigan law school's affirmative action arguments.
I know that you have read the supreme court decisions on Gratz and Grutter. In both cases, the universitiy did not try to defend AA based upon the legacy or slavery or societal racism. The state defened AA by saying that white students needed exposure to blacks and Hispanics in order to be community leaders. You know that state and local governments have used diversity as the compelling reason to justify separate and unequal treament for citizens and that it has been a long time since socieital racism has been used to defend AA.
Of course, the Gratz and Grutter case also demonstrate that the AA is about punishing whites. The State of Michigan applied the same separate and unequal admission standard to both blacks and Hispanics. If AA was meant to help blacks overcome racism and the legacy of slavery, then Hispanics would not be included or at the least, hispanics would be held to a different standard than whites.
Also, the recent Harvard study of black students demonstrates that AA is about punishing whites. I believe that about half of the “African-American students” at Harvard where either recent immigrants to the U.S or the children of immigrants. It is impossible to argue that AA is about overcoming the legacy of slavery when 50% of those benefiting have to legacy of slavery to overcome Of course, it AA is meant to punish whites, then using AA to admit large numbers of upper class, highly educated immigrants makes complete sense. Such AA programs deny seats to whites with higher qualifications while not lowering the standards of the university by very much if at all.
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The propopents of the race based social engineering need to do is justify a system where as the Washington Post reported, 25% of the blacks at Harvard at not AFrican-Americans but either immigrants or the children of immigrants. Any system that is meant to help African-Americans overcome the problems of societal racism would definitely not be helping the children of the ruling class from African.
Of course, if the system is really designed to punish whites for the crimes of some of their ancestors, then the current Harvard System makes complete sense.
In addition, the proponents of separate and unequal race based decisions need to jusitify a system where the children of middle class white service members who are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan or those firemen who rushed into the World Trade Center would be held to a much higher standard than the children of middle class black Americans. If you want to design a system to help children who deserve it, then why not have a lower admission standard for the children of veterans instead of a higher standard for them?
If you want to make an even comparison, the compare the children of black and white parents living in Prince William County Virginia. Image a white male (WM) and a black male (BM) attending the same high school such as Stonewall Jackson. Let say that both take AP classes but the WM takes more and both make around 1200 on the SAT and have a B+ average.
The WM will probably end up at James Madison University where he can decide if he wants to be a policement, a school teacher, or enter business as a manager trainee. The top 14 law schools, Business schools, and top graduate programs will be cut off to the WM since they do not admit anyone from James Madison. If he majored in a science, medical school and graduate biology is also lost but he can look forward to pharmacy, physical therapy, or at a stretch, Dental School. The WM will have to pay his own way with zero scholarships and will probably borrow money and have about a 50% of not finishing.
The BM will probably be admitted to the University of Vriginia with a scholarhsip. the BM will have a full time dean to look out just for black students. The BM will not have to worry about his major since any degree from UVA will get him into a Fortune 100 job, a top law school, or possibly a medical school (See the studies on how blacks are admitted to professional schools with much lower scores). Since the BM attend UVA instead of James Madison, the world will consider him significant smarter and more capable than the WM.
The real quesiton is why people who claim to be progressives support such a racist system and support race based social engineering.
Civil rights legislation itself could be considered “race based social engineering”, and what was so wrong about that? AA was never intended to be open-ended, but to help alleviate a long-standing historical race-based disparity of opportunity… which still exists by the way. In order for someone to convince themselves that AA was about punishing whites, I think they would have to willingly overlook the evolution of that disparity… or have a certain comfort level with it. It would be great if we as a society were beyond the point where AA was useful, but I don't think we are… yet.
Jspencer,
AA was forbiddgen from setting quotas but that did not stop governments from setting hard quotas for AA. In research this, I found out that in 2000, the black major of Atlanta set a mandatory quota of 32% minority. Of course, when a right of center activist group sued, the city stopped documenting that it had a hard quota but continued the program.
I would say that the proponents of AA should at least have the decency to pass a constitutional amendment that allows the government to conduct group benefits and group punishments If you are going to punish whites for actions of other whites, have the decency to make it legal instead of trying to hide the blatant racism of seperate and unequal government treatment in an AA policy.