Social Justice 101: Power Privilege and Oppression

[Himster]

You have yet to demonstrate that Affirmative Action results in POC being disproportionately hired or admitted.

Demonstrate?
The definition of "quota" is all the demonstration required.

Hmm, 50 years of Affirmative Action and no evidence of reverse racism OR All affirmative action = reverse racism.

It doesn't equal "reverse" racism (what a perverse form of new-speak), it equals racism plain and simple, giving special treatment to one race is racism no matter how well disguised.
Not only that, but affirmative action in 50 years has accomplished: nothing. Nothing except inflaming racial and gender tensions and giving seemingly valid grounds on which racists to object to equality. If I didn't know better I would be compelled to believe that affirmative action has been deliberately enforced to deliberately undermine egalitarianism over-all by cynical reactionaries and conservatives. That's a far better story than generations of incompetent and naive liberals and progressives consistently ing up and beating a dead racist horse.

[sumskilz]

All things being equal with regard to university admission applications, being African American get's an applicant a bonus equal to 230 additional SAT points on a 1600-point scale compared to white applicants, being Hispanic is equal to 185 points, and being Asian actually results in a 50 point penalty.

Admission Preferences for Minority Students, Athletes, and Legacies at Elite Universities

As Himster already pointed out, there wouldn't be any reason for peers to suspect that someone got in because of their race if it weren't for these racist admission policies. Because of enrollment limits, the natural result is that some people (Whites and Asians mostly) are not granted admission due to their race. This is an odd case where being discriminated against is evidently a sign of privilege, unless of course if you're Asian (then you're just ignored as usual).

[Elfdude]

Demonstrate?
The definition of "quota" is all the demonstration required.

You really don't understand that bias has a mathematical definition right? That affirmative action is removing bias, it is not giving special treatment. By definition you're wrong. You're getting a bit unreasonable here.

It doesn't equal "reverse" racism (what a perverse form of new-speak), it equals racism plain and simple, giving special treatment to one race is racism no matter how well disguised.

No it isn't. Racism is bias, a mathematical bias. That bias cannot be simply "inverted". At best you can nullify that bias or deconstruct it. Affirmative action does nothing other than nullifies it. You're spinning your words and demonising a concept you refuse to explore at all.

Not only that, but affirmative action in 50 years has accomplished: nothing. Nothing except inflaming racial and gender tensions and giving seemingly valid grounds on which racists to object to equality.

Seriously? Affirmative action is equivilant in your mind to racism? I'm not talking on principal here. I mean absolutely literally. Anyone who thinks that affirmative action gives racists equal grounds clearly doesn't understand affirmative action and clearly has no idea what racism is. Oppression is the fact that if we don't control for race only 26% of minorities would currently be in attendence at elite universities. Your status quo that exists in a race blind utopia is a 75% cut in admissions for minorities. Do you not get how ridiculously damaging that is?

Want to see something cool himster? It's called the positive effects of Affirmative Action:
2000/2010 JUST 10 YEARS and I'll also list out their proportion population.
10.9%/13.7% graduates Blacks 12.9%/13.6% of the population, and holding!
9.3%/13.5% graduates Hispanic 12.5%/16.5% of the population. Still got some distance to cover
73.7%/66.3% graduates White 63.7%/66.3% of the population. oh wow, whites are earning degrees in proportion to their distribution now too?

My goodness, in just 50 years we went from hundreds of times more whites educated per year to proportional graduation between white and black students?! wow thank you Affirmative action. Sorry hispanic students, we didn't recognize you as different than white until fairly recently. Remember white students, although your proportion has gone down your numbers have gone up!

If I didn't know better I would be compelled to believe that affirmative action has been deliberately enforced to deliberately undermine egalitarianism over-all by cynical reactionaries and conservatives. That's a far better story than generations of incompetent and naive liberals and progressives consistently fing up and beating a dead racist horse.

Seriously Himster, just look it up. You're like as wrong as you can possibly be and won't even check it.

All things being equal with regard to university admission applications, being African American get's an applicant a bonus equal to 230 additional SAT points on a 1600-point scale compared to white applicants, being Hispanic is equal to 185 points, and being Asian actually results in a 50 point penalty.

Admission Preferences for Minority Students, Athletes, and Legacies at Elite Universities

As Himster already pointed out, there wouldn't be any reason for peers to suspect that someone got in because of their race if it weren't for these racist admission policies. Because of enrollment limits, the natural result is that some people (Whites and Asians mostly) are not granted admission due to their race. This is an odd case where being discriminated against is evidently a sign of privilege, unless of course if you're Asian (then you're just ignored as usual).

*yawn*

So you know a lot of those elite colleges are private and don't have to give a about racial admission. But let's go ahead and look at this in detail

http://www.kailchan.ca/wp-content/up...iversities.pdf

Now this is what I call averaging which is exactly what you're doing. You're attempting to create a single standard to which people are held and are calling that equality. Well what is the effect of your so called equality? Apparently about 26% of minorities of any kind are admitted under race blind policies. They've studied it! Wow. So your proposal is to exclude the vast majority of minorities from the opportunity at our highest university?

Ok, so then whites continue to recieve the best educations at a disproportionate rate while other races stagnate if we entertain the idea that quality of education relates positively somehow to quality of life. Great. So then I guess we try and create a black harvard? Maybe there they can recieve enough education to one day hope to create an equitable society. Oh wait, nope won't work, see in order to maintain comparable standards the black harvard would still have to institute the same standards. Awwww.

Frankly the reason these private schools have SELF instituted affirmative action policies is because overall they're effective, they're considered worthwhile to the development of other students and beneficial for real world proportions to be present within the schools. While minorities are definitely favored, they're not favored to infinity, they're favored exactly to the same proportion they should be of the population. Which is to say they normalize the tests. Furthermore top university officials are of the opinion that it is in general more difficult to be for example black than it is to be white, and thus showing similar accomplishment is in fact a marker of a better individual. Being the elite school snobs they are, a passionate dunce can be turned into the brightest pupil, but a lazy prodigy will go nowhere fast.

Now why would they think this? Surely if we control for education there's no disparity?

Actually the disparity is exactly in line with Racial Disparity when we look at education

Asians are decreased - highest test scores - most educational achievement - already disproportionate admission of asians into higher education
Whites are 0 - moderate test scores - largest legacy, most numerous - disproportionate but not as much as asians
Hispanics are increased by a small proportion - lower test scores - lower educational achievement - under-represented graduates
Blacks are increased by a larger proportion - lowest test scores - lowest educational achievement - normal graduate numbers

Wow. Which is to say private universities which are of no obligation to follow this rubric subject their own rules and guidelines to it roughly along exactly the lines of oppression with regards to education we would expect. While they're certainly not reversing the trend the opposite direction they're giving minorities a solid standing point. However, the same thing can be accomplished by reducing the emphasis on test scores. That's exactly what University of California Berkley did, they reduced the weight of test scores and reppealed affirmative action. I'm not certain how it turned out but it's a better idea than race blind admission.

http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/content/8/2/312.short

That one was interesting too.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/gso/sum...3anderson.html

And that.

[sumskilz]

You're attempting to create a single standard to which people are held and are calling that equality.

That's right, whereas from your perspective being discriminated against is oppression for some and privilege for others depending on race.

That's exactly what University of California Berkley did, they reduced the weight of test scores and reppealed affirmative action. I'm not certain how it turned out but it's a better idea than race blind admission.

You're just talking out your ass, because considering race as a factor in college admissions has been illegal in California since 1996.

This is how that turned out: Did the Sky Really Fall? Ten Years After California's Proposition 209

And then there is this:

UC Berkeley, meanwhile, is subject to Proposition 209 of 1996, an amendment to California’s constitution that prohibits public universities from considering race, sex, or ethnicity in admissions. After Proposition 209 took effect in 1998, Asian enrollment at the school continued to increase, reaching a peak at 42 percent of undergraduates in 2007 and 2008, according to data compiled by UC Berkeley’s admissions office for The Atlantic. This was roughly double the school’s Asian population in 1983. In 2013, Asians accounted for 38 percent of UC Berkeley’s undergraduate population, one percent down from the year before. (California is home to 5.6 million Asians who make up about 15 percent of the entire state. That’s roughly three times the total percentage of Asians in the U.S.)

So how many Asians do you want to discriminate against in order to get your proportionate vision? Should 23% of the student body be kicked out or have been rejected in the first place in order to make them proportionate to the state population or 32% of the student body in order to make them proportionate with the country's population? The Asian overrepresentation problem is really similar to the Jewish overrepresentation problem in the 1920s. Harvard's president at the time, A. Lawrence Lowell argued that the only way to reduce anti-semitism was to institute quotas - “The anti-Semitic feeling among the students is increasing, and it grows in proportion to the increase in the number of Jews. If their number should become 40% of the student body, the race feeling would become intense.” Of course those quotas were to the benefit of WASPs so they were racist, but quotas for the benefit of other groups aren't because... ?

EDIT:

Want to see something cool himster? It's called the positive effects of Affirmative Action:
2000/2010 JUST 10 YEARS and I'll also list out their proportion population.
10.9%/13.7% graduates Blacks 12.9%/13.6% of the population, and holding!
9.3%/13.5% graduates Hispanic 12.5%/16.5% of the population. Still got some distance to cover
73.7%/66.3% graduates White 63.7%/66.3% of the population. oh wow, whites are earning degrees in proportion to their distribution now too?

And you know this was the result of affirmative action rather than something that would have happened anyway because you can go back in time and test that hypothesis, but hey at least your pet people have the pride of knowing that they did it all by themselves. It must feel really good for you to know that you're giving this to them with the policies you support. Well, not the Asians. them, they're already doing too well and of course disadvantaged white people don't exist.

Now what can we do to get professional sports teams and the entertainment industry to proportionately match the population? I mean those are high profile lucrative professions being monopolized by certain categories of people.

[Iskar]

I do have the impression that what is clashing in this thread are a decisively collectivist perspective and a decisively individualist perspective.

While it is indeniable that humans tend to strive for personal power and use cliques and social groups to expand or preserve that power, I find the collectivist idea that this behaviour is rooted in some sort of innate antagonism of certain groups - more or less arbitrarily defined by race, gender, standing, etc. - both dangerous and mislead.

The basic argument, that the composition of all relevant bodies and institutions of society should exhibit the same distribution as the whole of society with regard to all of these arbitrarily chosen criteria (race, gender, wealth, education, ...) has two fundamental problems:
1) It presupposes that the normal distribution is something inherently good that we should try to achieve rather than working to ensure that each individual's needs are met in the best possible way. I.e. the argument puts the abstract notion of "all" above the concrete notion of "each one", while it should be the other way around.
2) It commits a selfcontradiction: On the one hand it presupposes that there is some innate or fundamental difference between races and genders that makes them antagonise each other, while at the same time arguing that, since there was no difference at all between these groups they should be represented everywhere proportional to the composition of society.

Hence, this kind of Social Justice agenda reinforces the artificial notions of group specific characteristics that it claims to battle. Quotae and affirmative action actively disregard the individual needs of people in favour of their membership in one or the other artificially defined group.

Latent prejudices and discrimination can, in my opinion, only be effectively removed if people witness that such criteria as race, gender, etc. are utterly irrelevant to an individual's role in society.

[Elfdude]

That's right, whereas from your perspective being discriminated against is oppression for some and privilege for others depending on race.

Being discriminated from means separated from, yes discrimination can be good or bad. I discriminate for boys. I discriminate against girls. While they seem the same they are fundamentally different concepts. Discriminating for boys is a privilege. Discriminating against girls is an oppression.

The problem with this is that we recognize that society should not find race, gender, or class to be especially important. In some cases it's literally no different than playing a game of monopoly and giving someone you're playing with a fifth the funds. It's ridiculous to expect over time that this disequalibrium will not come to define subclasses by race, gender and class if we do not act to stop it. Fundamentally the direction oppression will head will continue to make gaps between the privilege and the oppress wider and wider unless it is stopped. One way that we proposed to stop it was through education, at least in that category everyone recognized that access to education should be equal with regards to race. The result was affirmative action. The goal of affirmative action was to do two things. First it was to stabilize the gap between peoples with regard to race and prevent it growing larger, second it was to hold that proportional for approximately 2-4 generations. The result of this is theoretically replacing the the entire demographic distribution of education so that prior historical irregularities cease to matter. One year at a time.

It's slow, admittedly. The pay off grows exponentially smaller as you approach your target distribution. However I would say in approximately 50 years or so the average educational achievement of blacks and the average educational achievement of whites will be indistinguishable.

You allude to disenfranchisement of asians and white students by worse minorities. That's silly because there's no disenfranchisement, while proportions have changed, the total numbers of every category have almost always increased. Which is to say, new spots opened up to accomodate diversity, no spots were lost to diversity.

Perhaps, more indicative the university students in many cases actually whole heartedly support it. This stereotype is advanced more by outgroup individuals than ingroup.

You're just talking out your ass, because considering race as a factor in college admissions has been illegal in California since 1996.

First, not talking out of my ass. In 1995 facing the impending AA ban Berkley researched how they could replicate the admission numbers via other manipulation. Their faculty came up with the idea of reducing emphasis on test scores and increasing emphasis on socioeconomic status. I don't know how that really went for them. California is doing terribly with regards to achievement across races. It's doing even doing worse with whites.

California White Population % = 35.9%
Califnoria White Admission % = 26.8% (LOWER than under affirmative action)
California Black Population % = 6.6%
Califnoria Black Admission % = 3.7% (LOWER than under affirmative action)
California Hispanic Population % = 38.1%
California Hispanic Admission % = 20.7% (HIGHER than under affirmative action) *Note hispanic had only been recently added to the list of races, hispanics have improved in every category since their race was separately tracked.
California Asian Population % = 13.6%
California Asian Admission % = 39.8% (About the same)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Nov21.html

Second, it kind of sounds like you're talking out of your ass here. Asians did not change as a result of AA either direction and with the exception of hispanics it appeared the other racial groups significantly benefitted from it (including whites!). However I would assert hispanic's would have reached parity with their distribution of the population with regards to admissions at this point under affirmative action.

This is how that turned out: Did the Sky Really Fall? Ten Years After California's Proposition 209

And then there is this:

http://www.csus.edu/mcnair/the-mcnai...15.pdf#page=25

http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_theses/123/

Your articles interpret a lot of things as no losses (which there clearly are) and bases things off of some weird other research that I don't buy. At least in the case of universities prop 209 has been a miserable failure. Affirmative action did better across the board. Affirmative action was less discriminatory across the board too.

So how many Asians do you want to discriminate against in order to get your proportionate vision?

Read the numbers, same before and after prop 209. Affirmative action discriminates against so many asians

Should 23% of the student body be kicked out or have been rejected in the first place in order to make them proportionate to the state population or 32% of the student body in order to make them proportionate with the country's population?

I wouldn't say any need to be kicked out. Stop adding new asian seats.

The Asian overrepresentation problem is really similar to the Jewish overrepresentation problem in the 1920s. Harvard's president at the time, A. Lawrence Lowell argued that the only way to reduce anti-semitism was to institute quotas - “The anti-Semitic feeling among the students is increasing, and it grows in proportion to the increase in the number of Jews. If their number should become 40% of the student body, the race feeling would become intense.” Of course those quotas were to the benefit of WASPs so they were racist, but quotas for the benefit of other groups aren't because... ?

No one is restricting asians from going to school. Yes, it takes higher test scores for asians to be admitted. Asians get better test scores on average. Furthermore, you do realize that by asserting the asians should be there you're just as much kicking out the two thirds of blacks that won't be admitted, the half of hispanics, or the half of whites. I guess that's fair. I'm not suggesting anyone is kicked out, enrollment numbers grow at a pretty stable rate.

Let's break this down another way. There's 2.84 million students in california.

That's (approx)
1,136,000 asians
100,000 blacks
560,000 hispanics
761,000 whites

California has 38.8 million people. About 1 in 15 of them will be going to school. However if you're asian you make up 5.5 million people. That means as an asian in california you have a 1 in 5 chance of being admitted. About 2.5 million blacks live in California. However if you're a black living in california you have a 1 in 25 chance of being admitted. There's 14.8 million hispanics but as a hispanic in california you have a 1 in 30 chance of being admitted. There's 13.5 whites, they have about a 1 in 15 chance. What do you suppose the long term effects on the structures of society is with that happening?

I guess we are just to assume asians are better students, good luck black people, education is doomed to die out within you.

EDIT: And you know this was the result of affirmative action rather than something that would have happened anyway because you can go back in time and test that hypothesis, but hey at least your pet people have the pride of knowing that they did it all by themselves.

Ok, so it wasn't the result of affirmative action. Which California is just an exception. Oh wait, prop 209 lets us test whether it was Affirmative Action? Too bad for you.

It must feel really good for you to know that you're giving this to them with the policies you support. Well, not the Asians. them, they're already doing too well and of course disadvantaged white people don't exist.

Because I'm supporting the people who need it I must always want to topple the people who are doing well. Sumskillz, what part of bringing people up to parity don't you understand?

Now what can we do to get professional sports teams and the entertainment industry to proportionately match the population? I mean those are high profile lucrative professions being monopolized by certain categories of people.

I don't know, we could perhaps publish authors who wrote the original books in their culture rather than emphasize the white rewrites who then go onto fame and fortune? We could perhaps cast actors to play roles which respect cultural heritage. Admittedly part of the issue is that there's not enough POC in the industry but if people start demanding it the industry will start demanding it and hiring practices will shift. Essentially speaking, answering your question involves answering why it's disproportionately one way in the first place. Personally, I see the media as a reflection of society.

I do have the impression that what is clashing in this thread are a decisively collectivist perspective and a decisively individualist perspective.

While it is indeniable that humans tend to strive for personal power and use cliques and social groups to expand or preserve that power, I find the collectivist idea that this behaviour is rooted in some sort of innate antagonism of certain groups - more or less arbitrarily defined by race, gender, standing, etc. - both dangerous and mislead.

I wouldn't agree with you and I think that is where lays the confusion. I'm not hear arguing for collectivist anything. I'm not arguing against the individual either. There are real conclusions you can make about individuals from this theory, there are real conclusions you can make about groups from this theory.

The basic argument, that the composition of all relevant bodies and institutions of society should exhibit the same distribution as the whole of society with regard to all of these arbitrarily chosen criteria (race, gender, wealth, education, ...)

Yes, that is the law of large numbers and an infinite pool of possible answers. The population will always resemble a normal distribution UNLESS it is skewed with regards to a consideration.

If those considerations are not considerations that we agree are ethically correct to make judgements on then if the resulting distributions are skewed with regards to them, this means there's an unconscious bias driving the skewed distribution. In one direction we call it privilege. In the other direction we call it oppression.

1) It presupposes that the normal distribution is something inherently good that we should try to achieve rather than working to ensure that each individual's needs are met in the best possible way. I.e. the argument puts the abstract notion of "all" above the concrete notion of "each one", while it should be the other way around.

No it doesn't. The meaning of what we are attempting to accomplish implies that. Any distribution will fall on a normal distribution if there is no bias. This is an absolute truth. Normal distributions however are not all the same. The only way that normal distributions differ is with regards to their bias. Which is to say, the normal distribution of heights in a first world country is the same shape as the normal distribution of the length of journeys ants take to find food. What defines these distributions as different are the question you ask and the bias observed.

We can use the normal distribution of income to tell us that net worth is significantly skewed to towards the wealthy. When we extract the wealthy from the calculations our new distribution displays the adjusted net worths falling dramatically implying that our effective average income (the income most of us are familiar with) is much lower than our mean. Similarly instead of looking at the wealthy we can look at races. We find a dramatic shift occurs when we eliminate data except for black, except for white, except for asian etc. The mean moves all over the place.

The only possible way for the mean to shift like this is for there to be vastly different make ups with regards to race. This implies that for some reason race biases our wealth distribution. We have two explanations of what this bias is, 1. Overt/accepted bias, at one time it was accepted to deny marriage rights to homosexuals. 2. Unconscious/unintentional bias, bias which we don't intend but occurs as a result of our routine behavior. Another name for this is the central limit theorem, which states that any group, under sufficiently large number of independent random variables, and with a continuous variable outcomes, the mean will approximate a normal distribution. It guarantees that an unbiased collection done over a long period of time, the mean will reach normal distribution, but in any biased or limited data set, you are unlikely to have the a perfectly normal distribution.

I suppose to be technical about it there's a lot of different distributions that show up depending on the question your asking. We know what these distributions should be if the answer is unbiased. This provides an excellent tool for assessing bias. Should the distribution change when data is compared by race that implies there exists some race bias, the distance of this change is equivalent to the amount of bias in effect at an individual level.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._distributions

2) It commits a selfcontradiction: On the one hand it presupposes that there is some innate difference between races and genders that makes them antagonise each other

No, admittedly a lot of people have been trying to create this innate differences thing. I'm sticking to my guns on that one though. An observed difference is not necessary an innate difference if the observed difference is the result of bias. Which is to say, you're not observing true difference but the effect of bias on the distribution. Through removing that bias do you see a true distribution.

while at the same time arguing that, since there was no difference at all between these groups they should be represented everywhere proportional to the composition of society.

If we entertain the idea that these factors should not bias our outcomes. Another way to say that, is that if I believe race should not be a factor with regards to pursuit of opportunity, then I believe that the distribution of outcomes should be unchanged with regards to white, black, blue or purple.

Hence, this kind of Social Justice agenda reinforces the artificial notions of group specific characteristics that it claims to battle.

It does not. These characteristics are not characteristics of the group but characteristics of the bias.

Ouotae and affirmative action actively disregard the individual needs of people in favour of their membership in one or the other artificially defined group.

That's not true. Individual needs are balanced in affirmative action with the needs of the group. If the processes of individual action inevitably lead to a bias distribution (because of beliefs) the natural solution is to impose limitations which prevent this distribution from getting out of control. This is a necessity if we don't favor creating subclasses.

Latent prejudices and discrimination can, in my opinion, only be effectively removed if people witness that such criteria as race, gender, etc. are utterly irrelevant to an individual's role in society.

Agreed. However the entire point of this thread is to point out to people that what they believe are prejudices are more nuaced than they thought. Affirmative action has been demonized by politicians to mean reverse racism when it implies absolutely nothing of the like. Individuals champion individual determination with no idea that their actions are supporting status quo and further widening gaps of disparity between these groups. What is happening to the population distribution should be understandable to anyone who has taken highschool math, but for some reason people are turning towards these propaganda driven definitions rather than the academically understood ones and hence coming away with inexact and misinformed interpretations of the issues surrounding this.

[Napoleonic Bonapartism]

Came across this video on Youtube, I always find Slavoj Zizek interesting, and he has a novel approach to this issue; basically, he states that the way to combat racism is not political correctness but an acceptance of ingrained stereotypes, and playing on these as a means of bonding - an interesting approach, and worthy of note:

[Warning - use of racist terms, but that's rather the point.]

[Phier]

Now what can we do to get professional sports teams and the entertainment industry to proportionately match the population? I mean those are high profile lucrative professions being monopolized by certain categories of people.

High vertical jump privilege is real man.

[Sir Adrian]

There is no such thing as reverse racism. Racism is racism. Positive action is racism because it favors a group over others based on race.

Are you serious? I'm quite curious here. Moreso, I'm curious what you're implying. Is it dumb because it's obvious straight people don't have to come out or is it dumb because you don't understand that the life experience that homosexual individuals lead means that people will always assume they're hetero unless otherwise stated? Do you not suppose the event of coming out isn't a stressful event that could potentially be catastrophic for most homosexuals? Approximately 20% of the homeless population are LGBTQ youth. Why do you suppose that is? What do you suppose the difference is if you're not homosexual?

It's dumb because it completely ignores the basics of how a statistical population works and appeals to emotion instead. It's dumb because despite claiming that your posts are against discrimination you use the very concept which defines homophobia and sexuality based discrimination, the necessity for a sexuality to "come out" like some freak thereby cutting the proverbial branch from under your feet.

Do you not suppose the event of coming out isn't a stressful event that could potentially be catastrophic for most homosexuals? Approximately 20% of the homeless population are LGBTQ youth. Why do you suppose that is? What do you suppose the difference is if you're not homosexual?

And 70% of the homeless population are straight men, your point is? Or are you implying that 20% of the population should receive preferential treatment and more opportunities than 70% of the population because that would very discriminatory.

You're attempting to create a single standard to which people are held and are calling that equality.

Everybody being held to the same standard IS the definition of equality. I thought neo-berianism had picked up on that.

[sumskilz]

Because I'm supporting the people who need it I must always want to topple the people who are doing well. Sumskillz, what part of bringing people up to parity don't you understand?

Quotas inevitably result in discrimination against somebody, unless by chance the aptitudes of the applicants match the quotas proportionately, in which case they're pointless.

Second, it kind of sounds like you're talking out of your ass here. Asians did not change as a result of AA either direction

Well sure, as you say:

Berkley researched how they could replicate the admission numbers via other manipulation

Good job I guess, with the manipulation and all.

I guess we are just to assume asians are better students, good luck black people, education is doomed to die out within you.

So apparently you actually believe that no black people would be able to cut it without special assistance, that's telling. I think there is enough evidence to conclude otherwise - Thomas Sowell graduating from Harvard in 1958 for example.

Actually he might have something to say on this topic:

[fkizz]

God damn, I feel being a bit mischievious and tempted to ask/provoke if this is the atheist alternative to morality and ethics, but I know better than that.

[Elfdude]

There is no such thing as reverse racism. Racism is racism. Positive action is racism because it favors a group over others based on race.

Positive action? You mean affirmative action? That's not true and fundamentally at odds with the definition of affirmative action.

It's dumb because it completely ignores the basics of how a statistical population works and appeals to emotion instead.

Actually it doesn't ignore how a statistical population works. I've been appealing to how a statistical population works since the first post.

It's dumb because despite claiming that your posts are against discrimination you use the very concept which defines homophobia and sexuality based discrimination, the necessity for a sexuality to "come out" like some freak thereby cutting the proverbial branch from under your feet.

You mean to say, that because someone says that not experiencing "coming out" is a privilege, that they're cutting off their own head by using a term "coming out" which is understood to be something that you only have to do in a repressive environment. Now let's examine this, most LGBTQ youth do experiencing a coming out event where their orientation and gender expression becomes family and friend knowledge. The reason that this event has any sort of differentiation is because society foists it upon them. There is nothing about that image that reinforces that coming out needs to happen. The image only expresses that not having to worry about it, in any circumstance, is a privilege that straight people have without realizing it.

And 70% of the homeless population are straight men, your point is?

No they're not. Barely even 50% of the population is male, straight or otherwise.

Or are you implying that 20% of the population should receive preferential treatment and more opportunities than 70% of the population because that would very discriminatory.

Ignoring your misquoted statistics to back up your backwards view. I'm stating that the reason those 20% of LGBTQ youth are experiencing homelessness is a direct result of coming out going badly. You're the one making wild assumptions.

Everybody being held to the same standard IS the definition of equality. I thought neo-berianism had picked up on that.

It is the definition of equality, too bad equity does not equal equality.

Quotas inevitably result in discrimination against somebody, unless by chance the aptitudes of the applicants match the quotas proportionately, in which case they're pointless.

That's a hilarious bend of the meaning of discrimination. First off discrimination is not all bad. I've stated this multiple ways, it can be good or bad, it's a privilege if it benefits you, it's an oppression if it doesn't. Secondly, the problem is not discrimination but rather bias based on race.

Well sure, as you say:

Good job I guess, with the manipulation and all.

I'm not sure the implications of your statement have any relevance here. Berkley in preparation for the repeal of affirmative action instituted statistical manipulations to try and control for diversity in other ways. Not only did they fail, they did worse. All admission rates in california did worse except for asians which remained the same. That proves exactly what I said was true. It proves that under affirmative action diversity (INCLUDING FOR WHITES) was better, and no one was disenfranchised relative to today.

So apparently you actually believe that no black people would be able to cut it without special assistance, that's telling.

Do you not understand that implication is staring you in the face? What does it mean when 26% of minorities would gain admission in a race blind society. If it doesn't tell you that different races need more assistance, or rather that different races have been ignored long enough for this problem to get this bad in the first place, then I don't know what to tell you. The meaning of what I have plastered across this board is thus:

1. Different needs of different races have been historically ignored
2. Different races have been historically provided for differently
3. Differences in relative assets of different races influences their relative opportunities

The improved performance of different races is not due solely to the merit of the individual but rather in large part to the unearned advantages that have been compiled in the favor of the individual in the first place. Which is to say, because of the resources differences, top private schools consider black people's lack of access to resources to fundamentally bias (or skew) their test scores lower by ~260 points. This is not because being black is lesser, this is because of the disadvantages that society has forced upon blacks for most of history and now for whatever reason having difficulty realizing that part of civil rights is fixing that issue in the first place.

I think there is enough evidence to conclude otherwise - Thomas Sowell graduating from Harvard in 1958 for example.

Actually he might have something to say on this topic:

Not a fan of the guy. Thomas Sowell by the very nature beat the odds. While within the white demographics he's totally comparable to white attendees at harvard, amongst the black he is a pariah, an outlier. The fundamental disconnect is that for us to get to an world where Thomas Sowell isn't an exception but rather just as common as his white counterparts we have to correct the barriers that the vast majority of blacks face that make Thomas Sowell's path a rarely walked one.

[chriscase]

It seems to me that our ideas of social justice are more solidly defined as the negation of known injustices. We have examples of terrible injustices from the past as well as continuing injustices today. It's not like slavery is really abolished in fact.

I find debates about the statistics in higher education and the efficacy of affirmative action somewhat beside the point. If a program is not accomplishing its purpose, by all means let's improve it. If you dispute the fundamental need for some kind of measure to counteract injustice, then the efficacy of a particular program is irrelevant.

[Himster]

That's a hilarious bend of the meaning of discrimination.

Sumskilz has it correct, quite clearly.

First off discrimination is not all bad.

Yes it is. For discrimination to be positive for one groups it is by definition harmful for another. There is absolutely no way around this fact.

I've stated this multiple ways, it can be good or bad, it's a privilege if it benefits you, it's an oppression if it doesn't.

For privilege to exist oppression is the necessary by-product.
Playing an absurd game of tit-for-tat only escalates the problem. Fighting racism with racism is as dumb as a firefighter using a flame-thrower to save a burning house.

Secondly, the problem is not discrimination but rather bias based on race.

Bias doesn't necessarily harm anyone. Some loner weirdo living in a cave in the mountains on a deserted island has biased views against Jews, freckled people and rural Sri Lankans : that's not a problem, that harms nobody. You can label it a kind of thought crime if you like, but who cares. Biases don't necessarily cause harm: discrimination, unequivocally, does.
It's IF that bias leads to discrimination: that's the problem.

1. Different needs of different races have been historically ignored
2. Different races have been historically provided for differently

Number 2 is the most racist one in this list. That's the one that needs to be stamped out most utterly, not mirrored and accentuated and made worse.

3. Differences in relative assets of different races influences their relative opportunities

Yes.

Originally Posted by Doctor Shuu
And 70% of the homeless population are straight men, your point is?

No they're not. Barely even 50% of the population is male, straight or otherwise.

90% of the homeless population is male. 70% being straight is quite a conservative number.

That affirmative action is removing bias, it is not giving special treatment.

Replacing old biases with new ones is not removing bias.

You're spinning your words and demonising a concept you refuse to explore at all.

Race based quotas and different application requirements based on race are racist concepts that rightly demonize themselves.

Racism is bias

Racial bias is meaningless and harmless mere thought-crime until it becomes discrimination. Discrimination is the only racism that matters, thought crime is nothing, no matter how much you seem to wish it was something.

Affirmative action is equivilant in your mind to racism?

Self evidently.

Anyone who thinks that affirmative action gives racists equal grounds clearly doesn't understand affirmative action and clearly has no idea what racism is.

I am seriously starting to think that you have no idea what racism actually is.

[Elfdude]

Sumskilz has it correct, quite clearly.

No he doesn't.

Discrimination.
1. The unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.
2. recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another.

Now let's consider 1 again since you've so conveniently forgotten every other post here. Which institutions do we discriminate with and in general approve of that discrimination? Bathrooms is a good example although I disagree with the theory behind it most people recognize that we should discriminate between different sexes in bathrooms. Another example is families, we provide incentives to families because they offer long term benefits to society and in general we approve of offering them a helping hand. We discriminate for poor people when it comes to admissions, we provide them tax credits, subsidized housing, subsidized loans and etc.

Discrimination is neither good nor bad, it only means recognizing the difference between one thing and another, when it's applied upon a factor that we do not recognize it should be applied to (race) then it's bad. However you are still considering discrimination based on race (prejudice) to be the same as discrimination based on bias (normalizing). They're not.

Yes it is. For discrimination to be positive for one groups it is by definition harmful for another. There is absolutely no way around this fact.

No, this presumes a limited amount of achievement. For example, Affirmative Action in California, Helped White, Black, and Latino students while not influencing the over-represented status of asian. The normalization of bias is not a linear function. There is no equal and opposite reaction. Furthermore we've always focused on bringing individuals UP to parity not pulling individuals down to parity. When it comes to things which can be described as normal distributions this ordinarily logical assumption breaks down because by nature a normal distribution is not a binary distribution which is what you're referring to.

For privilege to exist oppression is the necessary by-product.

That's not true either. Oppression versus privilege has to do with what our philosophies and worldviews are. Fundamentally we consider race to be a privilege for some and an oppression for others. However we don't usually consider food stamps oppression for some and privilege to many. We don't usually consider the attention a father spends with his children to be an oppression to all of the other children he could have spent it with. Etc. Etc. Etc. You could say, oppression only comes up when we don't recognize that the privilege should exist. However this is irrelevant, correcting bias (normalizing) is neither privilege or oppression. It's simply correcting something we recognize shouldn't have been different in the first place.

Playing an absurd game of tit-for-tat only escalates the problem.

That's why we don't. Affirmative action is not a tooth for a tooth, affirmative action is, ok we're sorry we took your tooth, let's get you some dental work.

Fighting racism with racism is as dumb as a firefighter using a flame-thrower to save a burning house.

Agreed, however you're arbitrarily defining something as racism. You're avoiding academically defining racism because the academic definition is the one I'm using. Good job.

Affirmative Action is to the fire a fire extinguisher not a flame thrower, a flame thrower would be reparations.

Bias doesn't necessarily harm anyone.

Ugh. You're not talking about the same bias I am. I'm talking about mathematical bias.

Some loner weirdo living in a cave in the mountains on a deserted island has biased views against Jews

However that's not what I'm looking at here. I'm not looking at the bias of some loner in a cave. I'm looking at the bias present in society. I.E. we know because of mathematical law that the action of individual bias skews the normal distribution. So essentially speaking, you're sort of fundamentally wrong. You're attempt to describe a scenario where 'bias' doesn't matter fails because there's no such thing as bias without a comparison point, i.e. for a homeless guy to be biased against jews we need a comparison, for a comparison we need a population etc. However any population we compared would be irrelevant because he's isolated from power within society.

freckled people and rural Sri Lankans : that's not a problem, that harms nobody.

But that's not what we're discussing, we're discussing people who hate jews, sri lankans and freckles who still operate within and influence society itself.

You can label it a kind of thought crime if you like, but who cares.

You labeled it a thought crime. As long as you use strawman your fallacies can be dismissed by a child.

Biases don't necessarily cause harm: discrimination, unequivocally, does.

Of course bias doesn't cause harm. Discrimination doesn't either. Again, only bias in the areas we recognize it to be bad matters. Only discrimination in the areas we recognize to be bad matters. I'm not going to call for an end to triangle discrimination from squares, sorry but learning discrimination is a fundamental skill for giving meaning to something, anything. We recognize race to be one of those areas which we shouldn't discriminate over, we recognize gender to be one of those areas, and to a certain extent we recognize class to be one of those areas. That's something that we pretty much agree upon. Your fundamental issue is that you feel that in recognizing the difference between peoples (discrimination) we're reinforcing those differences (discrimination). That's entirely counter to the point I'm making here and what I'm arguing.

There is no automatic or implied connection between identifying differences and removing bias and reinforcing racial divides. This connection is imaginary and spread by many politicians who are fans of obfusicating the issues of race.

It's IF that bias leads to discrimination: that's the problem.

I wouldn't even say full stop yes to this one. If that bias is something we agree shouldn't exist it's a problem. Bias by nature leads to discrimination in behavior. It's an absolute. Were your analogy of the homeless isolationist to be appropriately compared he would have to interact, and upon interaction his bias would come into effect.

Number 2 is the most racist one in this list. That's the one that needs to be stamped out most utterly, not mirrored and accentuated and made worse.

I agree. Different races should be provided for the same.

California White Population % = 35.9%
Califnoria White Admission % = 26.8% (LOWER than under affirmative action)
California Black Population % = 6.6%
Califnoria Black Admission % = 3.7% (LOWER than under affirmative action)
California Hispanic Population % = 38.1%
California Hispanic Admission % = 20.7% (HIGHER than under affirmative action) *Note hispanic had only been recently added to the list of races, hispanics have improved in every category since their race was separately tracked.
California Asian Population % = 13.6%
California Asian Admission % = 39.8% (About the same)

Interestingly enough California's repeal of Affirmative Action gave us a great way to track the results of race blind vs affirmative action.

That's (approx)
1,136,000 asians
100,000 blacks
560,000 hispanics
761,000 whites


California has 38.8 million people. About 1 in 15 of them will be going to school. However if you're asian you make up 5.5 million people. That means as an asian in california you have a 1 in 5 chance of being admitted. About 2.5 million blacks live in California. However if you're a black living in california you have a 1 in 25 chance of being admitted. There's 14.8 million hispanics but as a hispanic in california you have a 1 in 30 chance of being admitted. There's 13.5 whites, they have about a 1 in 15 chance. What do you suppose the long term effects on the structures of society is with that happening?

Why do you think I might consider it fair that everyone has an admissions rate of roughly 1 in 15 (the average) when we control for race? Do you not think it is fair?

Just for a comparison again, for difference between 2000 and 2010 with affirmative action:

10.9%/13.7% graduates Blacks 12.9%/13.6% of the population, and holding!
9.3%/13.5% graduates Hispanic 12.5%/16.5% of the population. Still got some distance to cover
73.7%/66.3% graduates White 63.7%/66.3% of the population. oh wow, whites are earning degrees in proportion to their distribution now too?

How amazing. Affirmative action seems to stamp out exactly #2, even better it is not mirrorred, accentuated or worsened.

90% of the homeless population is male. 70% being straight is quite a conservative number.

My bad, 51.3% are single males
23% are families with children
24.7% are females
5% are children
39% are adolescents under the age of 18 <-- Approximately 40% of this number is LGBTQ youth that no longer have a home after "coming out"

56.6% are black
28.7% are hispanic/latino
38% are white
2% are asian

The bolded area was my point.

Replacing old biases with new ones is not removing bias.

Agreed. Which is why we're not replacing biases. We're normalizing bias.

Race based quotas and different application requirements based on race are racist concepts that rightly demonize themselves.

No they do not. Again I've done the mathematics for you. Your assertion here is that

California White Population % = 35.9%
Califnoria White Admission % = 26.8% (LOWER than under affirmative action)
California Black Population % = 6.6%
Califnoria Black Admission % = 3.7% (LOWER than under affirmative action)
California Hispanic Population % = 38.1%
California Hispanic Admission % = 20.7% (HIGHER than under affirmative action) *Note hispanic had only been recently added to the list of races, hispanics have improved in every category since their race was separately tracked.
California Asian Population % = 13.6%
California Asian Admission % = 39.8% (About the same)

Affirmative action increases bias (not from the numbers), that it's representing implementing a reversal bias (not from the numbers), that it is preventing good students from being admitted (not from the numbers), and lastly that private schools which don't have to follow the process choose too anyways because ???

Again 26% of minorities currently in college would still be in college if we removed Affirmative Action. It seems like you think you're fighting against discrimination but at some point you're going to have to come to terms with the fact that the solution you're advancing would dramatically harm different races, while improving nothing for any of them.

Racial bias is meaningless and harmless mere thought-crime until it becomes discrimination.

Bias = the total measurement of the individual action of discrimination. There is no bias without discrimination.

Discrimination is the only racism that matters, thought crime is nothing, no matter how much you seem to wish it was something.

No one but you is talking about a thought crime. I don't consider discrimination or bias to be inherently wrong, I consider them with regards to race to be inherently wrong. I just want you to realize that while your words say 1 thing, you are literally supporting a system of college admission which gives Asians a 500% higher chance at admissions than Blacks. Good job.

I am seriously starting to think that you have no idea what racism actually is.

I'm seriously beginning to wonder if you can use basic math. Reminds me of arguing with you when you were religious.

[Derpy Hooves]

If people don't get good enough grades and have sufficient activities, they need not be admitted to colleges. They'll be 18 entering college, which is the age where your parents can legally kick you out of the house and expect you to be responsible for yourself. Boosting their chance of getting into college because their racial group in that state performs poorly with admittance is not going to make them smarter or more responsible. They did not work hard enough, and babying them will not improve them. Instead, what you will be doing is taking away the chance of a more deserving applicant just because there were too many of his race already admitted.

[fkizz]

Why are social justice warriors so obsessed about race and sexuality? Don't they realize in practise they help in rising racial tensions rather than ease them...?

[chriscase]

This term "Social Justice Warrior" feels contrived and pejorative. I wonder where it originates. My own recollection is when the No Nukes contingent morphed into the "Jobs, Peace, and Justice" socialist movement. Is that what we're talking about, American Socialism?

[sumskilz]

This term "Social Justice Warrior" feels contrived and pejorative. I wonder where it originates. My own recollection is when the No Nukes contingent morphed into the "Jobs, Peace, and Justice" socialist movement. Is that what we're talking about, American Socialism?

About the history of the term, which is relatively recent, this seems accurate enough: Know Your Meme: Social Justice Warrior

From an opinion piece in the Observer that connects the term to the topic:

The ordeal of Northwestern University film professor Laura Kipnis, hauled before a campus gender equity tribunal for publishing a critique of academia’s current obsession with sexual misconduct, has brought the backlash against “political correctness” to reliably left-of-center venues such as Vox. But this is only the latest incident in the culture wars over “social justice” that have been wreaking havoc in a wide range of communities—including, but not limited to, universities, the literary world, science fiction fandom and the atheist/skeptic movement.

The progressive crusaders driving these wars have been dubbed “social justice warriors,” or “SJWs,” by their Internet foes. Some activists on the left proudly embrace the label, crowing that it says a lot about the other side that it uses “social justice” as a derisive epithet. But in fact, this version of “social justice” is not about social justice at all. It is a cultish, essentially totalitarian ideology deeply inimical—as liberals such as Jonathan Chait warn in New York magazine—to the traditional values of the liberal left, and not just because of the movement’s hostility to freedom of “harmful” speech.

At the core of social justice dogma is fixation on identity and “privilege.” Some of this discourse touches on real and clear inequities: for instance, the widespread tendency of police and others to treat African-Americans, especially young and male, as potential lawbreakers. Yet even here, the rhetoric of privilege generates far more heat than light. University of California-Merced sociologist Tanya Bolash-Goza, who accepts the “social justice” left’s view of pervasive structural racism in America, points out that the term “white privilege” turns what should be the norm for all—not being harassed by cops or eyed suspiciously by shop owners—into a special advantage unfairly enjoyed by whites. (Indeed, in its dictionary meaning, “privilege” refers to rights or benefits possessed by the select, not by the majority.) This language speaks not to black betterment but to white guilt. It also erases the fact that the “privilege” extends to many nonwhite groups, such as Asians.

Privilege rhetoric offers an absurdly simplistic view of complex social dynamics. A widely cited essay by pro-“social justice” sci-fi writer John Scalzi seeks to explain privilege to geeks by arguing that being a straight white male is akin to playing a video game on “the lowest difficulty setting.” Does the white son of a poor single mother have it easier than the daughter of a wealthy black couple?...

This hierarchy of identity politics can lead to some bizarre inversions of progressive values...

The Pecking Disorder: Social Justice Warriors Gone Wild

[chriscase]

Thanks for the references.

Is this where we really are in this thread? Seems terrible if so. Is this another version of the existential "Who feels more pain" contest? Haven't we learned yet this is a fruitless and narcissistic enterprise? I feel like we are stuck in time.

Does anybody remember the Woody Allen film "Crimes and Misdemeanors"? It's like we have all gone out the window.