ABOVE the entrance to America’s Supreme Court four words are carved: “Equal justice under law”. The court is pondering whether affirmative action breaks that promise. The justices recently accepted a case concerning a vote in Michigan that banned it, and will soon rule on whether the University of Texas’s race-conscious admissions policies are lawful. The question in both cases is as simple as it is divisive: should government be colour-blind...As a child I learned the maxim "two wrongs don't make a right", and it is as true in the case of affirmative action today as it was in my home or school 40 years ago. It may be legal, but for all the reasons listed above and so many more, there can be no moral justification for it. As Oliver Cromwell said when dismissing the rump Parliament:, "You have been sat too long here for any good you have been doing... Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"
Many of these policies were put in place with the best of intentions: to atone for past injustices and ameliorate their legacy. No one can deny that, for example, blacks in America or dalits in India (members of the caste once branded “untouchable”) have suffered grievous wrongs, and continue to suffer discrimination. Favouring members of these groups seems like a quick and effective way of making society fairer...
Awarding university places to black students with lower test scores than whites sounds reasonable, given the legacy of segregation. But a study found that at some American universities, black applicants who scored 450 points (out of 1,600) worse than Asians on entrance tests were equally likely to win a place. That is neither fair on Asians, nor an incentive to blacks to study in high school...
Although the groups covered by affirmative action tend to be poorer than their neighbours, the individuals who benefit are often not...
Although these policies tend to start with the intention of favouring narrow groups, they spread as others clamour to be included. That American federal programme began by awarding no-bid contracts to firms owned by blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans; now it covers people with ancestry from at least 33 countries...
The University of Texas (UT) justifies discriminating in favour of black people not on the ground that society owes it to them, but because, it claims, a diverse university offers a better education to all its students. That is a reasonable argument—some companies benefit from understanding a variety of customers, for instance, and the police probably keep order better if enough of them share a culture with the neighbourhood they patrol—but it does not wash for most institutions. In UT’s case, although colleges benefit from a diversity of ideas, to use skin colour as a proxy for this implies that all black people and all Chinese people view the world in a similar way. That suggests a bleak view of the human imagination.
Monday, April 29, 2013
Economist: Scrap Affirmative Action
From their keyboards to God's (or the Supreme Court's) ears:
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The changing of the reason for affirmative action is, I believe, a tacit admission that public support was eroding for the original excuse for affirmative action so a new, more durable reason had to be created.
"Diversity" is that reason and the hollowness of the idea is most noticeable in the relentless claim that it's necessary with nary a snippet of evidence in support. The defense of specious diversity consists exclusively of claiming that opposition springs from racism.
Pleasantly enough even that tactic's no longer working.
The thing I always think, and talk about with others, is, how would you like to know that the only reason you got this scholarship/admission/opportunity is because you are black/hispanic/other? You didn't get it because you -deserved- it, you got it because you are a different color. Isn't that condescending? "We're holding you to a lower standard because you're a differnet race or color, so we'll let you in, not because you earned it, but because we need to have more 'people like you' in our system." Wow, that's pretty brutal. 'Soft racism of low expectations', right Darren? Despicable, reprehensible, and just plain wrong.
Remind me who that bright guy was who talked about the soft bigotry of low expectations.... :-)
When my older kids were in an outstanding HS, with many Asian classmates and friends (mostly Chinese, Indian and Korean), several of their black classmates and friends admitted that they didn't have to take the AP-heavy coursework because they'd get admitted with just the honors work, and maybe 1 AP - and they were talking Ivies, Duke, Stanford level. They were right, too - it sends a nice message about work ethic. These were all bright kids who should have been challenged; one was removed to a private school for exactly that reason.
I don't really have a problem with factoring in the background a kid grew up in, regardless of race ... but if they then need to be taking remedial courses when they get in to college? That is a problem. It should at best be the last factor between two equal candidates ...which, in theory, would mean you admit one candidate a year that way.
What started out as a "thumb on the scale" to the kid who had overcome significant obstacles to acquire the same academic qualifications as an advantaged kid has turned into an elephant on the scale for any URM, who is automatically assumed to be disadvantaged because of his racial/ethnic status. I read that the SAT gap between the URM vs. white-Asian kids at Texas - the Fisher case- admitted outside of the x% rule - was something like 350 points. I've read up to 450 points between black and Asian kids accepted at the most competitive colleges (Ivies etc). The plain fact is that the black and Hispanic kids admitted to those schools are likely to come from professional families living in affluent areas and attending top schools; no disadvantage involved.
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