I've said elsewhere I'm fairly ambivalent about AA. I wouldn't call myself a supporter, and I suggested that other approaches might be better in the post you quoted.

I also was disagreeing with Max Cut's framing of AA as anti-discrimination. It seems like you misunderstood that. I also mentioned that AA was called positive discrimination in the UK (although no longer).

I think maybe you need to read more carefully.

.

I agree that how you ask the question matters, but that's kind of to my point, and remember I agreed with you that it was probably prejudicing the question to frame AA as "discrimination."

But I think the difference between the two survey results highlights the point I was making about the basis of support for anti-discrimination in liberal values. The fact is that affirmative action literally is "taking race into account in admissions" (in this context of higher ed). I pushed back on framing that as "discrimination" (a la murder) but I disagree that the phrasing in the Pew poll is problematic. The analogy to capital punishment would be asking whether death was a suitable penalty for some crimes.

So, I think the difference in popularity between:

is a demonstration of what I said before. Obviously popularity doesn't determine what is right, but originally I was responding to your post about not overly prejudicing people's perceptions of AA. The thing is: I agree that labeling it "discrimination" is prejudicial, but labeling it as "taking race into account" is not.

AA has also been called positive discrimination. Reverse discrimination by max cut. -Juan valdez

Can we please post in good faith. I never called AA reverse discrimination.

I was sharing my thoughts, responding to both him and yourself. You both said something to the effect of "i like to think of it". I reject that notion. If i said things that didn't apply to you, you probably should take it as they weren't intended that way and directed at max cut. Like you don't need to explain to me that you mentioned positive discrimination. i'm sure my writing style is to blame but you're definitely getting overly defensive based on what i was trying to say

this post may have something to do with it

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...1&postcount=91

The reason i asked is because a bunch of people have said they support AA. Strongly or not, if you support it then you should probably be able to offer some sort of explanation or guideline of how effective AA would look. Admittedly I havent followed your links yet. The reason I keep pressing is to see what happens when you are forced to confront the difficult parts of a/the policy. Neither you or max cut have denounced AA at harvard punishing asians. If its real or hypothetical doesn't change the argument. If you're not able to denounce it and you support AA (even kinda sorta) then perhaps it would be worthwhile to try and explain why you don't have a problem with harvards AA. The whole thing just comes across as shifty (not directed 100% at you)

I have a larger point to make but it will just derail at this point

I think everyone agrees on the basic goals (to increase representation of minorities in specific institutions with an overarching goal of reducing racial inequality in order to redress past wrongs). In academia I think it's common now to also see diversity listed a goal in and of itself, although not necessarily directly related to AA.

As far as effectiveness, I think past research has generally found that the programs were somewhat effective in achieving that first, most direct, goal. That is, whether at universities or in police department hiring or elsewhere, the creation of AA programs led to increased minority representation. Bearing in mind that in early AA programs women also were granted affirmative action and I've seen it argued that white women were probably the largest beneficiary of some of this.

On the more overarching goal, I would compare the role of AA in achieving larger goals in relation to inequality to the role of specific anti-poverty programs in achieving the goals of the "war on poverty" that also began in the 60s. There's been progress but you wouldn't necessarily say that any specific program was the silver bullet. I think there is reasonable evidence that AA programs have played a role in reducing racial inequality, but also reasonable arguments that, going forward, other means of addressing inequality might be more effective.

So I feel like it's important to disentangle the larger goals from the choice of means. A lot of people who argue against AA also disagree with the larger goals, so arguments about AA turn into proxy arguments about those goals. I think the larger goals are important but it's not necessarily clear to me that AA is an absolutely necessary way of achieving them. I wouldn't want to eliminate AA and replace it with nothing, but I think it's reasonable to recognize the philosophical difficulties people have with it and consider other approaches that would be more simpatico with widely shared values (re: the two poll results).

The misunderstanding must have come from your first post itt and our first exchange. Crying bad faith this many times for these weak of reasons isn't likely to accomplish anything positive for you

To be clear, that post is me saying that I think anti-discrimination law is an example of something intended to "put a brake on discrimination", but that AA does not fit into that analogy very well. That is, anti-discrimination law tries to prevent discrimination. AA tries to reverse the effects of previous discrimination. I think they are meaningfully different approaches.

Lets cut back a little bit on all this "bad faith" stuff. If you have strong complaints, PM/report them. Otherwise lets keep in mind that misreadings or misunderstandings are not bad faith, they are inevitable. Bad arguments (IYO) are also not bad faith (or at least no necessarily).

I think this conversation is going OK, lets just keep it moving forward.

So I pulled some super n00b **** and wrote a long post then accidentally deleted it. It was speculation about Asian students suffering from a sort of 'Tiger Mom Backlash' where their grades and test scores aren't being properly respected due to the misguided perception that they were only achieved through regular cat o' nine tails lashings. Sigh.

But anyhow, related: Are we just accepting as fact that,

because, uh, serious [citation ****ing needed] up in here.

This article below is pretty amazing and I had cited it for a different reason (in the deleted post, sigh, again) but it also has this relevant section:

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswi...irmative-actio

If AA isn't positive discrimination then it doesn't go far enough.

and I don't mind if you call me racist for supporting positive discrimination on the basis or race/etc, seems a bit silly but then so is most name calling. On the same basis you can also call me sexist as I support positive discrimination for women.

Consider a winner-take-all round-robin tournament where the matchups for each round are random. Before beginning, contestants are randomly assigned to one of two groups, A or B. Whenever a matchup is between a group A contestant and a group B contestant, the group A contestant has a 75% chance of winning. All other matchups are 50/50. The final heads-up match is a 50/50 coin flip, no matter the contestant groups.

Fair?

I don't agree that labelling it as "taking race into account" is not prejudicial. "Discrimination" is a subset of "taking race into account".

It's not clear to me, is it your view that affirmative action in education does not involve taking race into account in admissions? Is there some other neutral but accurate (and not overly vague) description of how affirmative action works that you would prefer?

Yes, it is taking race into account but that is not descriptive enough because its vagueness allows negative interpretations by rational people, including established discrimination against minorities. I don't know what the optimal proper wording would be.

You think a neutral description is one that doesn't allow negative interpretations by rational people?

OK, I think we just disagree about whether that wording is overly loaded or prejudicial. I can't think of anything else to say about it so fair enough?

Sorry, negative interpretations opinions based on mistaken interpretations (like established discrimination against minorities).

I think the question "should college admissions be allowed to take race into account?" could reasonably be interpreted as things like "should all-white colleges be allowed".


Here's a better poll question than the first one posted. It's a hybrid of that and the one I posted as contrast.

"In general, do you think Affirmative Action programs designed to increase the number of black and minority students on college campuses by taking race into consideration are a good or bad thing?"

Not nearly as numerous as people would imagine

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/opinio...mpression=true

There's still plenty of great advancements happening. People are getting woke

https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=12142

lol

i want my thread points for knowing where this whole thing was really trying to go from the start.. an attack on the "liberal bias" that is in universities from kids not wanting to hear hate speech on their campuses..

I'm not sure you deserve much credit for knowing something that obvious :P

Is that really fair while OP is temporarily unavailable to defend the thread due to a ban for racist posting or whatnot?

I mean, it's definitely the case that when JV says that he thinks there is a disastrous culture and ideology in academia he's referring to "liberal bias" as he perceives it. That's OK, he's allowed to take that perspective and argue it here. I'm just not sure anyone should give themselves a pat on the back for understanding that's his perspective.

This is all too low content, so we should probably not derail further, of course :P