The issue is that we've (we as in humanity) committed some great injustices that have left certain groups at a major disadvantage. The only viable solution, for now, is to give those groups an unfair advantage at the cost of some efficiency, lost opportunities, "white discrimination" and so on. Hopefully, this strategy may one day level the field enough that it's not needed.
Anyway, it's still probably statistically better to be a white male who went to a "less than Harvard" college than a minority from Harvard.
Could you explain your moral philosophy in a bit more detail?
Specifically, individuals in group A performed injustices back in the 60's and earlier against individuals in group B. Therefore, different individual members of group A (and other unrelated groups [1]) should be discriminated against in favor of different individual members of group B (all of whom were born after the 60's)?
So following this logic, should we discriminate against the children/relatives of criminals in favor of the children of crime victims?
What if group C disproportionately commits crimes today. Should non-criminal members of group C be discriminated against? Does it matter how group C is defined? I.e., is the statement true if group C is {x : x.race = REFERENCE_RACE}, but false if C is { x : x.ssn % 100 == 3 || x.isCriminal }?
I guess my fundamental question is this. You seem to implicitly hold some conception of group rights, and believe that certain groups are worthy of moral consideration. I doubt you believe that all 2^(6 billion) subsets of humanity are worthy of moral consideration, however. So how do you determine which subsets of humanity are worthy of moral consideration?
[1] I.e., asians should be discriminated against because whites were mean to blacks (and asians) in the past.
First of all, it should noted that institutional racism and oppression exists and is executed today against people of color, esp. black folks, in the US. Therefore, any examination of policies that seek to address race imbalances need to be considered in this context.
Second, crime and race are related in a major way, esp. in regards to institutional systems that keep black folks economically depressed and include them as prison population component of the industrial-prison-complex the US currently runs.
I can appreciate you want to abstract these thoughts out, but that is a very difficult exercise. Instead, it is much easier to talk about the actual reality minorities in the US face in regards to political and social systems and how those systems affect their existence. Such systems and policies that continue to keep economic opportunity and education out of the hands of people of color need to be addressed, and a race related policy like affirmative action is just one such tool to address those problems.
> I doubt you believe that all 2^(6 billion) subsets of humanity are worthy of moral consideration, however. So how do you determine which subsets of humanity are worthy of moral consideration?
All members of the human race deserve moral and ethical treatment and consideration. However, many different groups of people in the US are not treated in such a way, both on personal levels and systemically. As a society, different approaches and tools must be employed to correct that mistreatment, and yes that means the most disadvantaged and screwed over people will need tools that empower them and help them to no longer be considered a second- or third-class status in society.
I can appreciate you want to abstract these thoughts out, but that is a very difficult exercise.
The fact is, the post I argued against was implicitly assuming that certain subsets of humanity are morally entitled to harm certain individuals, based on acts done by other individuals to other members of the same subset.
Until you can explain to me why your grouping of humanity carries moral validity, I can't see any reason to take such arguments seriously, particularly when the exact same arguments lead to ridiculous results when they are applied to slightly different groupings of humanity.
I'm beginning to think that many proponents of AA haven't really thought things through.
I'm not sure I follow what you are saying. Are you saying that you feel policies like affirmative action harm some people? If so, what kind of harm are you talking about?
Ultimately no group of people is entitled to harm others, but it helps to be a bit more specific when talking about the flaws of existing or proposed policy.
This is a bit of a misconception that I hear a lot. Affirmative action policies generally fall into one of a few categories, but most policies usually either take race or gender into account for 1) equally qualified candidates (scores and qualifications are the same are almost exactly the same) or 2) qualified candidates where one candidate may perform slightly worse than another (say a student that has a few dozen fewer points on an SAT score compared to another). Affirmative action policies in which an unqualified candidate be selected over a qualified candidate are very rare, if not outright illegal in many places.
Keep in mind the limitations of calling an individual qualified or not. In some scenarios, the metrics of qualification do not match the goal of the organization looking to hire or admit a candidate, or the metrics fail to measure other factors that are relevant to a given job or a seat for a student. Generally speaking, affirmative action recognizes these shortcomings, esp. as they originate from systemic problems in society that keep certain groups excluded or in minimal participation in such jobs and schools. Further, most of the issues that affect those that do not get additional consideration due to affirmative action come from outside of affirmative action policies: economic inequality, reduced access to funds to attend school, outsourcing and economic downturns, increasing job automation, the loss of some kinds of consuming manufacturing jobs, de-unionization efforts, etc.
Suffice it to say affirmative action policies are useful and are not the overriding problem in keeping people out of work or unable to continue their education. Rather, affirmative action policies are a kind of band aid policy that can be ended when larger social inequalities are reduced or fixed entirely.
Your contention about AA policies is simply false. The boost given to minorities is typically quite large, +1.0 on GPA at U-Mich (i.e., black + 3.1 > asian + 4.0).
And again, you still have yet to explain why I should give your preferred grouping of humans ({x : x.race == REFERENCE_RACE}) moral weight over my preferred grouping ({x : x.ssn % 104 == 7 || x.isPoor}). Why are you unwilling to help out people in my group, which is also statistically disadvantaged?
I don't know a lot about UMich when it comes to entrance requirements, but what information I could find shows that a GPA of 3.1 would meet the entrance requirements, so in such an example both the higher GPA student and the black student with lower GPA both are qualified (at least by GPA standards) to attend the school. Even if there was no affirmative action policy at UMich, these two hypothetical students would continue to be evaluated with additional metrics beyond GPA. It should be noted that most universities do not have a mission to educate only the best performing students that exist, so a comparison of just GPA alone isn't enough (not too mention the issues with how GPAs are measured in the US, which is heavily intersectional with race and class).
When it comes to admissions for universities, class (as indicated by the x.isPoor) is a big deal, not only from a standpoint of acquiring funding to attend a university, but also how classism affects primary and secondary school students in the US. Those folks do deserve help in getting education and attending university of they so desire, just as much as racial groups that have historically and currently excluded from the same things. These things are not mutually exclusive, there are strong links with class status and race that can affect people of color differently than non-minority poor folks. Ultimately both issues should be addressed and attempts made to make up for the societal shortfall in getting these people access to the kinds of education they desire. The existence of a racial affirmative action policy is not a blocking thing for tackling other inequalities in society (in fact, due to the links between classism and racism, affirmative actions policies do take on class and poverty issues).
I'm not sure what you are referring to with the x : x.ssn % 104 == 7 bit, as social security numbers are strictly meant for the social security program and I find their use outside of such contexts to be inappropriate, but I'd be interested to hear what you mean by it.
Black folks have been and are on the receiving end of many institutional oppressions that keep them excluded from accessing higher education. People with those SSNs or gene patterns you mention are not discriminated against on the basis of those numbers or gene patterns and have no need for a program like affirmative action. The fact is that is that racism, sexism, ableism, etc. are alive and well and are perpetuated by US society in many respects, and we as a society need policies that will work to change this and provide a opportunities that are available and accessible to the oppressed.
You didn't read what I wrote. Group A is defined by an OR clause - some people in group A have SSN % 104 == 7, others are disadvantaged but don't have SSN % 104 == 7.
Statistically, group A has been and is on the receiving end of many institutional oppressions that keep them excluded from accessing higher education. We can tweak the definition of A a bit if it makes the analogy easier:
Group A = people who are either victims of racism directly OR people with SSN % 104 == 7.
Some members of group A have suffered racism, others have not. Just like group B. Both groups are statistically more likely to be racism victims, but plenty of people in those groups have not suffered racism in any significant way.
How do you distinguish between group A and group B? None of the criteria you have stated here actually differentiate between them.
I'm not sure you understand how institutional and systemic racism works, but that kind of racism affects all people of color. That some individuals receive worse treatment than others in such systems doesn't mean that the lesser affected individuals aren't affected by that racism, nor does it mean that if you have other privileges (say, class) you are protected from the effects of those systems.
When it comes to implementing policies to address that, you look at who the systemic problems are affecting and you make choices to help address those effects. I'm sure some people with some arbitrary SSN are a person who is affected by institutional oppressions, but people are not targeted for inclusions in those systems based on SSN, so that's not a metric worth targeting when implementing policies (although if it can be demonstrated that there is a significant link between SSN and institutional racism, that's another story).
Things like racism (and other related -isms like sexism and to a lesser extent, ageism) are considered bad because they can be, and typically are, exercised against people based on largely uncontrollable aspects of their outward appearance. Everyone subconsciously creates associations between appearance, race, and social status throughout their entire lives, whether they realize it or not, and then makes judgments about new people they meet in light of those associations. Those judgments based on outward appearance are part of an initial impression then taint other subsequent judgments (and actions), such those as about a person's character or intelligence. Also, people learn that it's socially acceptable and generally expected to treat (say) a black person is with less respect than (say) a white person. And entrenched ideas about what people's social status ought to be cause a feedback loop that tends to impose these ideas on subsequent generations.
There are lots of other external properties that people are generally prejudiced for or against, such as weight/height/build, (dis)ability, posture, voice/speech properties, dress sense, and so on; but these (a) are considered to be more under an individual's control, (b) aren't inherited, and (c) historically haven't caused anywhere near as many social problems as racism in the US. No doubt people who are discriminated against based on their voice (say) don't like it, but it's not considered to be a systematic, self-reinforcing, widely-observed, entrenched social problem.
A hypothetical prejudice against "SSN % 104 == 7", where the property is not even outwardly observable (so can't genreally taint initial impressions), nor subject to this ongoing reinforcement, nor passed down through generations (neither the prejudiced property, nor the prejudice itself), is completely different from race, even moreso than the other examples.
>Specifically, individuals in group A performed injustices back in the 60's and earlier against individuals in group B.
No, it has nothing to do with that. This isn't about punishing people for wrong doing, it's about correcting a the fallout from previous mistakes.
Further down you talk about "punishing" people. We aren't talking about punishing people, we're talking about giving a push to groups that are at a disadvantage as fallout to our previous behavior.
No, I don't hold anyone today accountable for what our forefathers did. However, what they did caused a spiral of disadvantage to certain groups and the only way we know to counter act this is to give these groups an "unfair" advantage.
Realize that just doing nothing is going to leave the same groups disportionately poor indefinitely. If you know a better way than AA (should be doable) then go for it. But we have to do something.
You are making the major assumption that getting into a school that you are not really qualified for is better than not getting into it.
This assumption has been studied. Evidence says that getting into a school you are not prepared for results in worse outcomes than getting into a worse school that you are prepared for. Read http://www.amazon.com/Mismatch-Affirmative-Students-Intended... if you want to see some of that evidence.
The question that I have is whether getting underprepared by highly able students into a good school AND giving sufficient assistance would result in better outcomes still. But at present there is no question that universities are not doing this. And therefore affirmative action programs are generally hurting the very people that they are trying to help.
Anyway, it's still probably statistically better to be a white male who went to a "less than Harvard" college than a minority from Harvard.