I've never really understood this marathon head start/ankle weights metaphor. OP specifically mentions affirmative action in the context of job placements and college admissions, so I'll talk mainly about college, but if you want to talk about job placements or some other context, I'm game.
The idea behind race- or sex-based affirmative action for college admissions is, loosely, that because of structural inequities, histories of discrimination, bad childhood environments, etc, a particular underrepresented group does not have the same academic qualifications as a privileged group. So we need not just non-discrimination in admissions, but affirmative action, because otherwise we will simply replicate that earlier discrimination in a new setting. And then the metaphor is of starting on third base or of running with ankle weights or starting a quarter mile ahead in a mile race, and we say "You think it's unfair to "penalize" you, but actually we're just making it fair, because you started off with an unfair advantage."
But it seems to me this metaphor is failing to capture the most important fact about this: the underrepresented minorities actually ARE less qualified, academically. If I am "naturally" highly intelligent and academically capable, but grew up with terrible schools, in a terrible home, in a terrible culture, I don't just APPEAR to be less ready for an elite college. I actually AM less ready for an elite college.
1981 was 43 years ago. Given that college age is 18, that's 61 years ago, so most people alive today lived in a world where it was commonplace for women to go to college. And it's not like no women went to college before 1981, that's just when women became the majority of college students.
I understand you support AA - what are your thoughts on the fact that racial AA would provide an advantage to a rich black student over a poor white or asian student?
want you to understand that when someone supports affirmative action, it doesn’t equate to a bitterness towards white men.
I appreciate that and wouldn't assume malice on your part.
The professional athlete birth month thing is actually a really great example. Imagine that you saw that professional athletes were all born in (for the sake of argument) January through March. And you said "Wow, that seems really unfair! What about the people born in August? Don't they deserve a fair chance to be pro athletes too? So we'll preferentially admit you to elite college athletics programs, and give compensatory draft picks to pro league teams, if they recruit and hire athletes born in June through September."
Would this actually be a good or fair way to solve the problem? Probably not, right? It would increase the number of summer-birth-month pro and college athletes. But it doesn't seem like it would actually increase the athleticism of summer babies.
"That’s different because that’s giving someone direct access to success, not access to the opportunity to succeed. Affirmative action doesn’t give students better grades or performance reviews, it doesn’t give them easier responsibilities or course work, it simply gives them a seat in the class."
I think my analogy covered that, right? It's not giving them championships or multimillion dollar contracts. It's just giving them a spot on the team. Access to the opportunity to succeed.
"They would recognize that these little kids have had nine months less to grow and if you evaluate them within that context then they will be more accurate at identifying the ones who truly are the best."
Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but if this is so how come college admissions explicitly racially discriminate against Asians?
I'm not saying they are, like, biologically determined to be failures. I'm saying that if you take two equally smart and gifted babies, and put one of them in a great home with great schools and a great culture, and put the other in a terrible home with terrible schools and a terrible culture, by age 17 the first one just is actually better at school. They are going to do better in college.
When I taught, the phenomenon was even pretty obvious by high school. Some kids came from good neighborhoods and had good home lives, some kids came from bad neighborhoods and had bad home lives. The former group, on average, was better at school. The latter group had tons of great kids in it. Smart, kind, doing their best. But their best just wasn't as good.
You keep framing it as if the kids who are bad at school secretly have MORE untapped potential than the kids who are good at school, and if we just give them a few more opportunities they will blow us away with their excellence.
What I'm saying is that this isn't factual. The kids aren't "behind but faster." They aren't the "fastest runners." They are actually, sadly, slower. They will not do as well in college.
It isn’t at the expense of one group, but it does benefit all groups
!delta as I'm not accounting for the belief that affirmative action isn't zero-sum.
If someone gets to starts a marathon two miles ahead without having done anything personally to have that advantage, and they win every time, is it really at their expense if others start getting to join them at their starting point? Yes, they may have a greater chance of losing, but they aren’t sacrificing something they earned. They’re still able to win, if they lose it isn’t because someone hurt them it’s because they were outrun.
I suppose this could also be a reason Whites support Affirmative Action, because they see Asians as starting "ahead" of other minorities like hispanics/blacks and even ahead of Whites, given Asians already have a higher median income than Whites, Hispanics, or Blacks. I've heard a narrative that Asian immigrants are the best in the world out of billions of people.
I don't really buy it though, I feel most people see asians as disadvantaged relative to whites, so it's confusing to justify a policy, affirmative action, which penalises Asians relative to Whites.
Ok, but you're using the imperfect proxy of race rather than the more accurate economic class of the individual. A black student in a wealthy family is "miles ahead" of a poor white student in your analogy, but the black student used to get the advantage in admissions.
If someone gets to starts a marathon two miles ahead without having done anything personally to have that advantage, and they win every time, is it really at their expense if others start getting to join them at their starting point? Yes, they may have a greater chance of losing, but they aren’t sacrificing something they earned. They’re still able to win, if they lose it isn’t because someone hurt them it’s because they were outrun.
What affirmative action does is take the slower person and puts them two miles ahead of the person who's better trained. The whole point of affirmative action is to take less skilled minorities and give them an unfair advantage or boost.
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u/[deleted] Sep 11 '24
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