After 24 hours to let the Supreme Court's partial ban on affirmative action sink in, the twin responses I'm seeing from the left are:
(1) Anyone can see that Justice Thomas couldn't have gotten where he is without affirmative action to prop him up--I mean, just look at his skin--and
(2) Legacy admissions seem pretty unfair, so what's the big deal with institutionalizing racism in admissions too?
I'd have more respect for Harvard et al. if they got rid of legacy admissions, too, but few of us will be supporting a general "no unfairness" Constitutional amendment, so it seems unlikely the Supreme Court will be asked to take care of that particular bit of dirty business for us. Those of us who object to legacy admission might consider not donating to universities that practice them. We could even pass federal legislation denying tax subsidies to universities that don't get it right. We don't have to embrace racism in order to get rid of legacy admissions.
18 comments:
There is a lot of cultural baggage that rides on this decision, long overdue. The whole problem with schemes like Affirmative Action is that they institutionalize unfairness, investing it with legitimacy, and this opens the system up to exploitation by other schemes that are inherently biased in favor of the interests of a selected minority.
Many of our societal / cultural themes in this era are predicated on this principle - Critical studies, Woke theory, alphabet studies, so on. None of these are advanced on the basis of an agreed merit across society - they're all slid through on the basis that an official preference is the only justification required. It won't go away easily.
Legacy admissions will continue as along as our elites continue voting Democrat.
Really the main benefit of an Ivy League education is already the rolodex; as the corruption of education continues under 'the successor ideology,' the education they receive is actively harmful to their minds.
But I am enjoying some of the hot takes.
https://hotair.com/headlines/2023/06/29/pow-wow-chow-author-has-thoughts-on-affirmative-action-n561639
(1) Anyone can see that Justice Thomas couldn't have gotten where he is without affirmative action to prop him up--I mean, just look at his skin....
And with that claim, they demonstrate one of the failures of affirmative action: did that person achieve that position because he was that good, or because his skin color/gender filled the right square?
Separately, I've seen no evidence that Thomas benefited from Affirmative Action; although, he did get occasional help and encouragement from individuals.
Eric Hines
If that were to be said in the USSC while in session, all eyes would turn to its newest member.
Those eyes also would turn to Sotomayor, who also was selected explicity because she's a woman and a member of a minority group. A self-identified wise Latina, in particular.
Further on this, on Martha MacCallum's Fox News show, she interviewed Virginia Lt Gov Winsome Sears; Fox reported this exchange:
"After anchor Martha MacCallum read from Brown Jackson's dissent, which claimed the majority ruling "deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life," Sears returned criticism, saying the jurist was the subject of Biden's planned nomination of a Black woman."
Eric Hines
Elite universities self-limit their slots to make them more rare and valuable. Each Ivy could admit ten times the number of students who could do the work just as well and receive the prestige.
But it would reduce the prestige, and it would make it harder for the elites to select who they like from their class years.
I think I had better write a post about prestige and college pretty soon, as I have been letting it simmer all year and is on everyone's mind this month.
With respect, the whole legacy admissions thing is a red herring. Nobody picks their parents, on either side of that question.
Althouse had a good link that I think illustrates the more fundamental problem. The lack of firm objective criteria turns the whole exercise into a giant game of conforming to the whims and prejudices of college admissions screeners.
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2023/06/nearly-every-college-admissions.html
If colleges want to help disadvantaged students they can do some stuff that doesn't involve discrimination:
1) Require their students to tutor at public schools where most of the students are poor or test scores are always low or graduation rates are abysmal. Help disadvantaged kids do better before they get to college.
2) Consider non-racial factors. Family income is one. The one I've always liked is to look at an individual's test scores in comparison to the average test scores at his high school. Take one kid who comes from a school where the average SAT score is 1000 (out of 1600 in my day) and makes a 1450; and another kid who comes from a school where the average SAT score is 1300 and makes a 1450. I'd argue that the first kid deserves more credit - he's done much better than expected which bodes well for his future studies.
I have yet to see an argument in favor of Affirmative Action that addressed concerns about the possibility of losing sight of the end in the means.
Elise, that #2 suggestion might have the added benefit of not all the achievers bugging out of not so great schools for better ones- and perhaps the payoff would work to the advantage of both.
Excellent suggestions.
ty, douglas. I hadn't thought of that added benefit - good catch.
If universities really want to pick academic pearls out of unlikely situations, they probably ought to pull out the stops offering generous scholarships to people with great SATs from impoverished families. How they expect to help either the students or the schools by admitting students with mediocre SATs, I have no idea. I only wish they'd make up their minds whether IQ is important. If it's not, what the big deal about a prestigious college, or advanced educational pursuits in general, for that matter?
As long as the price remains so high, a poorer individual is engaged in indentured servitude if they pursue higher education. I’ll be paying until I die.
[Universities] probably ought to pull out the stops offering generous scholarships to people with great SATs from impoverished families.
Tex, you might mention Texas A&M (Commerce) has a great "honors" program that uses SAT and other such merit scores to award "golden ticket" four-year rides to the deserving.
https://www.tamuc.edu/honors-college/#tamuc-section-274698
She might, but I might mention that four years isn't enough. In general I find that we teach as follows:
K-6: True things, like being kind.
7-12: False things, like Newtonian physics.
College: We explain that the things you learned earlier are false.
Masters: We begin to introduce you to what might be true.
Doctorate: We bring you to the edge of what we know.
You've got to go all the way to see the edge. Most people don't need to do it, and you can make a good living without ever getting close. But if you want to know, you have to go to the edge.
Grim, clearly that was the original intent of the progression, but do you think we teach anywhere near that sequence any longer? I'm not even so sure it's true through the 7-12 bracket any longer, and certainly not beyond that. There are always exceptions of course.
There are definitely schools where only false things are taught; and others, I gather, where basically nothing seems to be. What the numbers are, I couldn’t estimate.
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