SCOTUS punts on affirmative action

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

It's all just a moronic game.  It's pathetic to watch a white person who can't get their act together blame black people.

As if the opposite doesn't happen all the time.

Well two wrongs don't make a white.

[HansOslo]

I have a question about affirmative action. Is it based solely on factors like race and gender, or does it also take class into account?

Typically it's solely on race or gender, but there are cases of income being used as a metric.

In that case affirmative action looks like a completely ridiculous concept. In my opinion, admissions should be based on merit, without regards to background or race.

But if you are supposed to have some sort of affirmative action, it should be based on class rather than race. The son of two Wall Street bankers is not disadvantaged, and neither are Barack Obamas daughters. It is the poor that are disadvantaged, and that applies equally to the poor white man and the poor black man.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Discriminatory policies should have no place in the land, regardless of who benefits from them.

[muon2]

     Discriminatory policies should have no place in the land, regardless of who benefits from them.

But is SCOTUS correct in saying that diversity on campus can have an educational benefit, and if there is no other way to achieve it race can be used as a factor?

Some schools, particularly some public universities, have a policy that just about anyone with a HS diploma can gain admission. Those students aren't guaranteed success, just an opportunity. If HS scores are less of a factor, can diversity be a factor?

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Discriminatory policies should have no place in the land, regardless of who benefits from them.

But is SCOTUS correct in saying that diversity on campus can have an educational benefit, and if there is no other way to achieve it race can be used as a factor?

Some schools, particularly some public universities, have a policy that just about anyone with a HS diploma can gain admission. Those students aren't guaranteed success, just an opportunity. If HS scores are less of a factor, can diversity be a factor?

     I would think that for educational purposes, diversity in ideas is far more important than diversity in cultures (not to suggest that the two are unrelated, of course). If people want to skew the spread to promote diversity for educational benefit, then maybe we should consider affirmative action for political party affiliation.

[TNF]

     Discriminatory policies should have no place in the land, regardless of who benefits from them.

But is SCOTUS correct in saying that diversity on campus can have an educational benefit, and if there is no other way to achieve it race can be used as a factor?

Some schools, particularly some public universities, have a policy that just about anyone with a HS diploma can gain admission. Those students aren't guaranteed success, just an opportunity. If HS scores are less of a factor, can diversity be a factor?

Why should 'diversity' be the goal? The way I understood it, affirmative action was intended to give black Americans (whom the program only originally applied to) the chance to get into college. The shift in the focus towards making college campuses a place that are 'diverse' for the sake of diversity undermines the entire original purpose of affirmative action, which was designed to promote upward mobility for black Americans. The diversity argument, more than anything else, is a shift away from that to a kind of 'admissions should enrich white students' experience' policy, rather than one that actually promotes upward mobility. Essentially, college admissions are designed so that wealthy white kids can say that they have a 'black friend', while the educational benefit toward black or other minority students is completely ignored.

Again, the only people whom affirmative action benefits are wealthy whites and wealthy minorities, who can continue to use it as leverage to perpetuate class rule. Having token black, Latino, and Asian members of the governing class helps expand the American Dream myth to those communities, as if saying 'Look at [blank]! He or She went to college, and so can you!' while forever moving the goalposts to make it impossible. And of course this kind of affirmative action policy totally ignores the vast majority of the American poor, who are, of course, white.

A much more radical solution to this problem would just be to take the money out of higher education and let everyone go based upon their own merits. But then that would deprive the ruling class its inherent advantage of access to education, so forgive me if I don't see that happening in the near future.

[Link]

Well, I guess we have to agree to disagree on what is "get screwed" mean.  For sure White benefited relative to Asians in admissions policies under affirmative action but "lost" relative to other minorities.

Did you read this?

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How is that "losing"?!

I think we are talking about different things.  I am talking about Whites losing in college admissions.  I was using that standard since the thread was talking about affirmative action with respect to college admissions.  The research you cite about White women gaining relate to hiring for jobs and promotions. 

Trying to parse your way out of a corner, huh?

I will accept that it is totally possible White women gains in the job market with affirmative action for work advancement.  Does not really distract from my opposition to affirmative action but I will agree that White women and in fact most likely Asians (depending on the field in question for both) might have benefited from affirmative action in the aggregate. 

Ummm, it is not "possible"  or "might."  Any moron that goes to a college campus, large corporation, or government institution and knows even junior high history can tell you that the largest effect of Affirmative Action was to dramatically expand opportunities for women of all races.  This fixation on race is disturbing.  You come on this forum and tell us how intelligent you are and how entitled you are and you can't even count the number of women in a medical school class in 1950 and subtract that percentage from the percentage of women in a modern class at the same institution and tell us what the net result is.

Things have improved so dramatically for women of all races including white and asian that you, yes you sir, are actually the one that is more likely to be the beneficiary of affirmative action style programs when it comes to college admissions.

There are three things you never hear in these I hate Affirmative Action posts.  1) Affirmative action has historically been mostly about gender.  2)  At college institutions today men of all races including white and asian are beneficiaries of Affirmative Action type programs.  They are by no means the most aggrieved group... even though they belly ache the most.  3)  There is zero discussion of what our economy would be like had affirmative action NOT been put in place.  I am not a high school kid like a lot of the posters on this forum.  I've been to college, graduate school, and worked in the public and private sector.  I have worked closely and been mentored by several women of multiple races (white, asian, black).  I remember one white woman that I worked with who I considered a "middle aged" women.  She supervised me and helped me out a couple of times at work and was always available to answer any questions I had.  She was great.  If I ever had an issue or question I could count on her and women like her to help me out without having to deal with some macho egotistical "alpha" male attitude.  One day when I was in the break room I noticed the front page of the local paper was taped to the wall with a picture of that woman as a teenager.  The story was commemorating her and a handful of other women's first day at a local elite university.  This intelligent kind woman going to college was front page news.  Talk to women.  Ask them what it was like.  Then tell me Affirmative Action sucks and it's mostly just about blacks or whatever race you thinking is "winning."

[Link]

Guys sorry for being so harsh about this Affirmative Action thing.  It just bothers me every time this topic is discussed the major role it played in the advancement of opportunity for all our mothers, sisters, aunts, etc regardless of race is ignored.  It just makes me feel creepy to listen to people ignore the main effect and constantly go on about race.

[traininthedistance]

A much more radical solution to this problem would just be to take the money out of higher education and let everyone go based upon their own merits. But then that would deprive the ruling class its inherent advantage of access to education, so forgive me if I don't see that happening in the near future.

Oh hell no it wouldn't.  Upper-class parents would still be able to shower their children with more tutoring, enrichment, homework help, and a whole host of less tangible benefits, which would quite obviously manifest as the kids of the more fortunate having more "merits" by virtually any metric you'd care to devise.

This is a much more intractable problem than both sides like to let on, and there are no easy solutions.

[Frodo]

The American Prospect is now calling on liberals and progressives to recognize that race-based affirmative action is in its last days, and that now would be the time to shift the focus to class instead:

The Class-Based Future of Affirmative Action

RICHARD KAHLENBERG JUNE 25, 2013

Progressives must move on from the idea of race-based admissions policies.

Although many liberals have expressed initial relief that the Supreme Court decision in Fisher v. University of Texas did not kill affirmative action outright, when the dust settles it will become clear that the ruling made it substantially harder to justify race-based affirmative-action programs. The Court adopted a new, higher standard, requiring that judges "must ultimately be satisfied that no workable race-neutral alternatives would produce the educational benefits of diversity." Unlike the earlier ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger, the Court won't simply take the word of universities that race is a necessary consideration; universities will receive "no deference" on that issue, the Fisher Court ruled. Procedurally, the Justices simply sent the case back to the lower court, but make no mistake: The ability to use race as a qualification for admission has been scaled back by this decision.

Counterintuitive as it may seem, this step back represents a unique opportunity for progressives to back a more profound form of affirmative action based on economic disadvantage. The Court’s decision removes a political thorn in the side of America’s progressive coalition for more than a generation—affirmative action based on race has been politically problematic for the left from the earliest days because it drove a wedge between natural allies in the fight for fairness.