Semigrunching:

What's this 'discriminating against Asians' business? I admit I'm not up to date on the most current white supremacy talking points.

Please don't tell me they're talking about the Harvard thing.

I'm fairly sure we're talking about the Harvard thing.

sigh

We're still either having an argument about the actual merits of the case, or AA in general, or we're not. I don't see much point in the sniping that just side-steps the actual topic.

As far as the Harvard case, it's been a while since I've really looked into it, and the problem has always been that I don't have all the evidence, so it's hard to make a confident declaration. But, setting aside the larger political dynamics and problems related to the motivations of those bringing the suit, my impression of the evidence I've seen reported in the Chronicle of Higher Ed made me think the case was prima facie plausible. I also thought Card's rebuttal was pretty reasonable, e.g.

I think the Judge actually gets this somewhat wrong. That is, I absolutely doubt that Harvard is intentionally discriminating against Asian applicants, but the judge's question presupposes that any discrimination must be intentional, and thus wouldn't make sense to see the difference related to methods described above.

But I think that's likely to be wrong. It's entirely plausible that implicit biases introduced by the "personal rating" part of the score explain the admission disparities in the dataset Arcidiacono evaluated, and that could plausibly be considered a form of disparate impact discrimination, I think. Because the process is different for the excluded applicants, it wouldn't show up there.

Now, whether or not Arcidiacono's evaluation of the evidence is sound other than this methodological difference i don't know, but David Card has a good reputation and if his argument is that the main problem with the analysis is just who is excluded than I think that argument is slightly weak given the above considerations. I'm also not really sure to what extent the court ought to treat different admissions processes as separable when evaluating the claim versus comparing the overall admissions process as a whole. Beyond that, I haven't seen all the evidence, there's probably more to the arguments, and so I more or less have withheld judgement on all of this. But I don't think it's reasonable to dismiss the complaint completely out of hand.

Zooming back out to the larger political issue, I don't think a judgement against Harvard in this case would really change my overall opinion about affirmative action either way. The case is very specific to Harvard. So my main disagreement with Juan would likely be that I think he's trying to draw much stronger conclusions than are warranted, i.e. he's trying to substitute this case in for the whole of affirmative action, at least insofar as he's trying to make the issue discrimination against Asians. But that doesn't follow.

i think its telling that Blum and other anti-AA people, not particularly anyone in this thread, always remove legacy admissions which are probably the biggest discriminatory category of all these old universities.

that is particularly why it is justified to call blum, who is funding and manufactured the lawsuit at issue, a white supremacist. when he has made it his stated mission to attack universities to make it a level playing field, but notoriously avoids going at things where white's benefit.

the fact that children of alumni and children of donors end up on a special list to be admitted should rile people up, but it just seemingly doesn't to these people.

I absolutely agree that legacy admissions are likely a bigger problem, if we're talking about unfairness or deviation from meritocracy.

I think there's a generally pretty difficult problem with elite institutions like Harvard and inequality, precisely because the idea that they are supposed to be strictly meritocratic is pretty much wrong and always has been. Elite universities like Harvard want to keep the money flowing in and legacy admissions is pretty important to that.

So there's some fundamental disconnect in expectations here, I think.

You stated that I support racial discrimination. Probably because you believe:
But no, by definition you support AA. That's key to understanding why you shouldn't flatly claim I'm in favor of racial discrimination. You would first have to show that AA discriminates based on race. Second, it would probably be good for you to show where I even said I support AA, an omission that really calls into question your good faith. Apparently it's an easy omission since well named did the same, so you're not likely to get a paddlin for that.

Alas, yes I do support AA for the reason I gave, which is that society benefits from a more even playing field. Finally, I do not think supporting AA is supporting racial discrimination, as you claim. AA reduces discrimination. Say it with me... AA reduces discrimination.

Oh and I probably dgaf about any particular instance of the program, like whatever this Harvard stuff is.

FWIW I inferred your support from the post I quoted, which I think you also reference when you say "yes I do support AA for the reason I gave, which is that society benefits from a more even playing field."

Fair enough, apologies.

AA by definition is treating otherwise identical applicants differently on the basis of race. That’s discrimination based on race.

Whether that’s justified in the name of getting “a more even playing field” is a different question.

I am actually overall pretty pro AA but this whole thing with Harvard/AA is not “racial discrimination” is just dumb.

There is zero chance this is unique to Harvard.

WTF is with all this by definition bull ****. C'mon guys, please, before I stroke out.

AA is treating them less differently than they otherwise would have been treated on the basis of race. AA reduces discrimination.

I was watching a BBC detective show from the early 90s yesterday and in an episode they talked about "positive discrimination." I was somewhat entertained.

I think it makes sense to conceptualize AA programs as an attempt at reparations. An argument might go something like this: imagine that party A has stolen something of value from party B. If the police require restitution from A then that act of restitution does not constitute theft from A, in the same way that someone just seizing property would under other circumstances.

So I think the complaint is that assuming AA to be "discrimination" by definition prejudices the evaluation of that context. Clearly the analogy is imperfect with reparations of any type. That something of value has been stolen is pretty straightforward: racial discrimination involved quite literally the theft of a great deal of wealth from African Americans, for example. So there is certainly a "party B" who has been injured. But there is no single "party A", aside from the federal government, but then it's not the federal government which "pays" restitution in an AA program, it's somewhat randomly selected individuals.

The fact that the analogy (or the policy) is imperfect in that sense doesn't necessarily render it entirely invalid in my view, especially given the limits courts have set on how AA policies can actually operate. But I do think if you take the reparations framing seriously (and I think you should) then it suggests that maybe other more directly reparative policies would be a better way to try to achieve the same goal, which is the reduction of inequality caused by injustice.

I also think AA makes sense to correct systematic failures in lower levels of education, to level the playing field.

I suggest a more proper analogy would be that AA is like a brake on discrimination rather than a restitution/reparations for the results of previous discrimination.

It makes sense to me to think of anti-discrimination law in this sense, more so than AA.

You’re arguing discrimination at college admission level is correction for discrimination in other parts of society.

That’s a hard sell when the group being most discriminated against is Asian, a group that has been historically heavily discriminated against in US society and to this day is underrepresented in leadership roles (C suite/national politician).

We should think of AA more in anti-discrimination terms. Viewing it and speaking of it in terms of reparations is certain to get it a prejudiced hearing.

No, I'm arguing that it reduces discrimination at college admission.

I think the ship may have sailed on that already.



I think fundamentally we are not really disagreeing that much; we both want people to think about the context more rather than just applying a frame of "abstract liberalism" in which the relevant history and inequality is ignored. I get why that leads you to want to frame AA as anti-discrimination, because almost everyone agrees that anti-discrimination laws are good. But I think there are meaningful differences and in any case for better or worse there is some fundamental tension between the methods of AA and the liberal ideals upon which public support for anti-discrimination rests.

You're also right that framing it as reparations is not going to be any more popular, nor would actual reparations programs. That's a fair point. In practice, I tend to favor the general approach laid out here by Obama (sorry to those who have seen me quote this like 5 times previously :P)

Instead of arguing over the semantics or rhetorical value of "discrimination," I'd like to see the positive case for race-based affirmative action. What goal is it meant to achieve and is it effective in achieving it? Or is this a case of restitution? How would you argue for it?

"Affirmative Action" is called "Positive Discrimination" in Europe. I don't know what could be positive about discrimination, but apparently there must be something beneficial that I have clearly overlooked so far. I guess the whole thing falls into the category of the end justifying the means.

Note: Apparently randomizing between two equally qualified applicants wasn't an option, even though it would have obviously been the non-discriminating choice. What could be fairer than flipping a coin?

"The stated justification for affirmative action by its proponents is that it helps to compensate for past discrimination, persecution or exploitation by the ruling class of a culture,[15] and to address existing discrimination.[16]"

I wonder what percent of people responding to a pew poll would say murder should be legal. Would that be the correct context for measuring opinions on capital punishment?

Or because his first post itt he brought up "reverse discrimination", responded to questions implying, and implied himself? On top of that, he's the champion of the removal of "bad faith" postng so obviously he wouldn't have been doing that
What exactly are you two smoking? You don't get to just tell people "I like to think of it this way" to completely avoid reality. AA has also been called positive discrimination. Reverse discrimination by max cut. The word discrimination is in the title. They aren't discriminating a positive or a reverse, they're discriminating based on race. If you think it will create a more "level playing field", better social outcome, is more fair, etc, good for you. What you don't get to do is conflate your objective/goal/expectation with the methods used to achieve them. The method is racial discrimination. If you're going to advocate for that, you need to own up to it and/or justify it. Denying it and playing hide the ball is totally ridiculous. What max cut is doing is either completely dishonest or delusional

The max cut argument for capital punishment

I believe in capital punishment for mass murderers. We shouldn't pay for them to rot in prison, and we shouldn't let them roam free. If they roam free, they will kill more people

-Ok so you believe its ok to kill someone?

No, I'm against killing people

-but capital punishment is killing someone

no, I'm not a murderer, you're the murderer. Can we get a mod in here to deal with the bad faith posting?

-i never called you a murderer. in order to support capital punishment you have to kill people. you need to justify killing the person if you're going to support capital punishment

i'm talking about taking out mass murderers. there's net less murder with capital punishment. its reverse murder. also maybe i'm for capital punishment, maybe im not. maybe that makes your posts in bad faith

-are you on drugs?



As someone in favor of AA, what race categories are there to be implemented? and how do you rank order them? And by how I don't need a detailed story of history, you can just toss out a list and include a sentence or two if you feel inclined to offer an explanation for the position on the list