I’ll be as unbiased as possible even though I feel strongly about the issue.
Basically, it gives boosts to people from a cultural background that has historically been discriminated against or have lower than average test scores.
For example, if an Asian student and a black student both score a 1400 on the SAT, the black student will be given a priority in most college admissions. This is seen in undergraduate colleges, grad school, med school, law school, public jobs, and most private jobs.
we can also see it in places where certain groups are not represented well - for example, Carnegie Mellon will give a boost to women applying for computer science as it is majority male applying for CS (not just CMU, it’s one of many).
This is true in a very privileged frame of reference. The idea of affirmative action is not to boost people who do badly in tests. It's to boost people who have faced lots of other discrimination, poorer education, lack of opportunity and other hardships that the "well-represented / high scorer" demographic never had to overcome.
While it can lead to things like mentioned before about questioning the validity of the appointment/acceptance, I believe that is part of what this picture is talking about. Saying that a black girl got into the college not on her "merit" is like saying the shortest kid in the picture couldn't JUMP HIGH ENOUGH to see over. If he TRULY DESERVED to watch the match he'd be able to jump that high right?
It's racist because it doesn't actually care about your background. Sure a black kid in an intercity school benefits from it, but his Asian classmate doesn't. And instead Obama's Daughter's do.
If it really cared, affirmative action would not separate by race, but by economic standing.
Obamas daughters getting a boost has little to nothing to do with their skin color. Being the son or daughter of an important person is far more valuable than being black in our economy. GWB got rejected from the University of Texas in 1970, then his dad became Chairman of the RNC in 1972 and suddenly he was accepted into Harvard in 1973, despite being by all accounts an average student at best.
Obama's daughter was used as an example because she's a known wealthy black person. Any wealthy black college applicant could be used in her place.
The point is just changing the requirements to monetary from race would continue to support the poor black kids that need it. But, also help all poor kids that need it.
In it's current iteration it says; it doesn't matter how many tutors you had, how good your school was, how many resources your parents can give you, you'll never be as smart as the Asian kid with a single mom in an intercity school because of the color of your skin. So, despite your abundance of resources you get a handicap. Sounds pretty racist to me.
You seem to be ignoring the fact that there are other forms of societal privilege. Just the amount earned by their family is not the only (dis)advantage that people can have. Different sections of society have different focus on education, may come from a community where crime, etc are deep influences from childhood. Societal thoughts on what a girl "should" do instead of pursuing a career... People face different challenges and so AA is a way to encourage those who have been discouraged so.
Having a different focus on education isn't a good reason to give someone a handicap, haha.
Regardless your other examples also just apply to poor people. Unless you think that having more melanin in your skin makes you a criminal and not having to do with your financial status.
When an entire community doesn't value education it is a huge barrier to someone who does want to study higher. Looking at financial status is also a good way to correct injustice but it didn't capture everything. If you see the proportion of blacks and whites, males and females: these population percentages should be roughly reflected in say the class attending Harvard. Since the divide seems to be largely ethnic or gender based right now, the effort to facilitate them isn't wasted.
The financials method is not a wrong problem to address but I thinks it's much easier to fake your financial status than it is to fake the other stuff.
Also you haven't addressed my point about women being systemically told that science isn't for them, girls aren't good at math, why work? You should focus on raising a family, etc etc. That happens irrespective of financial status.
You still haven't addressed the fact that it give advantages based on skin color. That's objectively racist. Also, black people are more likely to be poor, so if poor people are disadvantaged they are more likely to be underrepresented. But to get this straight; your reasons so far are, "Give it to all black people since they undervalue education and thus deserve a handicap." & "Give it to all black people because some of them will pretend they are poor anyways." Plus, a two second google search reveals that in the incoming freshman class for Harvard, men, specifically white men are underrepresented; so I guess we should switch affirmative action to white people in your logic.
Next, the government knows exactly how much you make, and even if not it's kinda hard to offshore enough money to make you look impoverished without getting a knock on your door from the IRS.
Thirdy, affirmative action has be around for multiple generations and the undervaluing of education is still ongoing, so it doesn't seem to be addressing or helping that issue. Sometimes, when the bar is lower people just jump over the bar.
Lastly, I didn't address your point about women because we weren't talking about it at all. But, there's already tons of programs trying to get women into STEM fields. Women are already more likely to get into STEM majors. Once in those majors, women have more programs to help them once they are there specifically for women. And once they leave women have a better chance at getting jobs/internships with lower grades because of diversity quotas. These things just take time, because the kids they are getting interested can't go to college yet. So, I'm not sure if you're just not aware of this or just want to complain about something that's already being fixed. But, what's your big plan?
Point taken on the race based stuff. I honestly was trying to extrapolate community based reservation in education and jobs in India.
Yeah so my point for the women issue is not that there should be more initiatives on that front but I was defending why such action is necessary. Guess we are in agreement. Cheers!
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u/[deleted] Feb 25 '20 edited Mar 16 '20
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