> though the workarounds are obvious and probably little will change
It might seem so, but I am more optimistic. Look at UC Berkeley - they've had decades to find an effective workaround and haven't been able to do it. I'm sure some colleges will go too far, and there will be some lawsuits. But *the good guys will win those lawsuits*. Don't rain on my parade, Jeff.
In the meantime, I hope that states like California and New York that are utterly incompetent at educating black children will look to success stories like Mississippi for ideas on how to do better.
Ivy league universities are not exclusive by definition. If they really wanted to, then they could admit more students. They are not strapped for cash.
I think your wrong. Instead of at Asian students being in competition with Black students, they should have sued the existence of Legacy Admissions.
We live in one of the most Segregated countries in the world. Structural Institutional Racism exists and run on autopilot. Jim Crow never ended, it just evolves with each new generation of White policy makers.
So I'll give you some of the greatest hits post Slavery.
Jim Crows laws were, to reestablish White dominance of Black people. It was done with malice and forethought.
Be kept at the most menial jobs. In 1973, 63% of the Black population was unemployed or under employed. Black chattel slavery was the big bang of the American Capitalism system.
Over the Jim Crow period there were 400 Black Communities that were Genicided. With 250 man made lakes created over the area that the atrocities occurred.
Redlining of Black neighborhoods.
White Land Covenants.
The lack of pension for Black soldiers who fought in the Civil War, The Spanish War and WWI.
Targeted socioeconomic and political policies for over 235 years.
New Deal jobs, were denied to Black people.
FHA loans for home ownership after WWII, which was the big bang for the creation of the White middles classes, but denied for 98% of Black veterans.
Manufacturering jobs that moved to the suburbs without an adequate mass transportation. Which in turn created opportunity and food deserts.
Over 60 years of underfunding inner city school. Which in turn created the school to pipeline systems.
I could go on and talk about the human experimentation on our Black bodies. Or White educational experiments in inner city schools.
The myth of Black deadbeat fathers and the Moynihan Report. When Black soldiers returned from Vietnam, they weren't allowed to live with their significant other, even their wives. So they would have to sneek in at night. If detective, the family would be left homeless
The dumping of heroin in the poorest Black Communities and the assassination or imprisonment of the Black Nationalist. Done to difuse a coordinated Black Revolution.
The dumping of cocaine in the poorest neighborhoods, because of the secrets Wars the CIA was overseeing in Central and South America. This was done in the name of stopping Communism and "protecting American Interest = American corporations that had cheap land and cheap labor at there disposal.
Did you ever notice how Black professionals gravitated toward government jobs. It's because of Corporate hiring practices.
But in closing, but in closing I think you're wrong about a lot things.
One more myths to deconstruct. The largest population group to benefit from Affirmative Action were White women.
Something that was genuinely helpful in my youth - going to a "white" university in Apartheid South Africa - was that the university offered a "bridging the gap" course to disadvantaged students. At the cost of an extra year of study, academically promising block students were prepared for university entrance based on attained marks like everyone else (under the government pretence of "separate but equal", the government couldn't then block their entry).
Our next door neighbour was a professor at a "black" university which was underfunded compared to the one I studied at, but he had a very interesting point of view - which is that black South African students struggled with course that assumed some exposure to technology (due to the poverty in which they had grown up), but there was no racial gap in disciplines requiring abstract reasoning, such as math.
Sadly after the end of Apartheid all of this was overtaken by tokenism and advancement of the politically connected - and guess what: the asians who previously were not white enough to be treated fairly, were now not black enough.
It’s curious why no one talks about the legal issue, rather than the policy issue - ie, is affirmative action prohibited under the 14th Amendment vs. is affirmative action good or bad as a policy? Those are two different questions, but virtually all the commentary focuses on the latter to answer the former. The SCOTUS decision makes the same error notwithstanding conservatives longstanding distaste for activist judges. Not any more, I guess.
Some of the comments here seem to be hilariously missing what seems to be the crucial point here. So let me spell it out. The question of how collective guilt works and ought to work - or *not* work - has been dealt with in a mammothly stupid and repugnant fashion by progressives for 50 some odd years. The inability think this through directly, rationally address questions of who ought to owe what to who under what circumstances, at the very least see Sins of The Father logic as the barbaric garbage that it is, think of the amelioration of inequalities and discrepencies in a sane and thoughtful manner that doesn't just re-introduce more crazy arbitrariness into the system - arbitrariness being why inequality is a bad thing in the first place!
Instead it's "let me tell you about racism's greatest hits" *as if that even remotely addresses the point instead of missing it in the most mind-locked manner possible.*
And every other Trump voter and cranky IDW guru feels the truth of this shit. Their motivations aren't usually pure. So what. This is an intuition providing everflowing fuel to the bonfires the right rallies around.
This particular thing just seems worthy of rage and rantings at this point. Because my god.
Jeff, You speak the truth. Thank you for seeing and saying so clearly.
Especially when it is about a pet sacred cow.
If slavery (or WW2 or pesticides or white people or the Bible) made people poor victims, how about giving preference to poor victims instead of people who claim or appear to be a certain color?
Good question. It was definitely not state funded (any kind of education for non-whites was funded to a fraction of white education). And the students would not have had anything like enough money. My guess would be, funded by a charitable trust.
I don't remember anyone having a condescending attitude to those students, because when they started 1st year they were at the same academic level as the rest of us - and everyone knew about the massive differences in education funding for people of different groups (I think "white" schools received literally 3x the funding of "black" schools").
In later working life, when "affirmative action" driven appointments and promotions were common, there was a bit of a tendency to write off affirmative action appointees. IMO this was rough on those black colleagues who had earned their positions - people did not take them seriously.
And also, it was not good for some of the AA appointees. In the rush to fill diversity quotas, people were hired who did not have the skills or experience to do their jobs. Leading to a reinforcement of racial stereotypes in the minds of white & asian colleagues, and misery for the AA appointees who were basically set up to fail.
I have found how both he and I made a mistake. When looking up the number of applicants (Statista.com) the answer appears as a bar chart. I looked at the tallest and most leftward bar and mistook it for the answer. (71,164) But a closer look shows that this was only one of the schools. Add all bars together (and the applicants sitting in those bars) and you are right. 350k is the cumulative answer. I stand corrected!
My complaint was that you used annual live births as a substitute for population. You win, Let's check his math.
The number of appicants was 71,164 (See Statista.com) and the population of the USA is 334,967,580 (Census). Take the applicants and divide it by the Population and it appears that our hero was right. Answer = .2124507787
> though the workarounds are obvious and probably little will change
The Twitter link here ( https://twitter.com/MattBruenig/status/1674584619985805317?s=20 ) doesn't work: clicking on it sends me to a "Something went wrong" error page, & trying to search for it redirects to a login screen. I don't know what the problem is; presumably it must still have worked when you posted this.
Oh man that was funny. Some of your best work. Bravo.
> though the workarounds are obvious and probably little will change
It might seem so, but I am more optimistic. Look at UC Berkeley - they've had decades to find an effective workaround and haven't been able to do it. I'm sure some colleges will go too far, and there will be some lawsuits. But *the good guys will win those lawsuits*. Don't rain on my parade, Jeff.
In the meantime, I hope that states like California and New York that are utterly incompetent at educating black children will look to success stories like Mississippi for ideas on how to do better.
Holy shit that was hilarious. I second Baron...this might be the funniest thing you've written. The post-menopausal Aborigines line killed me.
Ivy league universities are not exclusive by definition. If they really wanted to, then they could admit more students. They are not strapped for cash.
I think your wrong. Instead of at Asian students being in competition with Black students, they should have sued the existence of Legacy Admissions.
We live in one of the most Segregated countries in the world. Structural Institutional Racism exists and run on autopilot. Jim Crow never ended, it just evolves with each new generation of White policy makers.
So I'll give you some of the greatest hits post Slavery.
Jim Crows laws were, to reestablish White dominance of Black people. It was done with malice and forethought.
Be kept at the most menial jobs. In 1973, 63% of the Black population was unemployed or under employed. Black chattel slavery was the big bang of the American Capitalism system.
Over the Jim Crow period there were 400 Black Communities that were Genicided. With 250 man made lakes created over the area that the atrocities occurred.
Redlining of Black neighborhoods.
White Land Covenants.
The lack of pension for Black soldiers who fought in the Civil War, The Spanish War and WWI.
Targeted socioeconomic and political policies for over 235 years.
New Deal jobs, were denied to Black people.
FHA loans for home ownership after WWII, which was the big bang for the creation of the White middles classes, but denied for 98% of Black veterans.
Manufacturering jobs that moved to the suburbs without an adequate mass transportation. Which in turn created opportunity and food deserts.
Over 60 years of underfunding inner city school. Which in turn created the school to pipeline systems.
I could go on and talk about the human experimentation on our Black bodies. Or White educational experiments in inner city schools.
The myth of Black deadbeat fathers and the Moynihan Report. When Black soldiers returned from Vietnam, they weren't allowed to live with their significant other, even their wives. So they would have to sneek in at night. If detective, the family would be left homeless
The dumping of heroin in the poorest Black Communities and the assassination or imprisonment of the Black Nationalist. Done to difuse a coordinated Black Revolution.
The dumping of cocaine in the poorest neighborhoods, because of the secrets Wars the CIA was overseeing in Central and South America. This was done in the name of stopping Communism and "protecting American Interest = American corporations that had cheap land and cheap labor at there disposal.
Did you ever notice how Black professionals gravitated toward government jobs. It's because of Corporate hiring practices.
But in closing, but in closing I think you're wrong about a lot things.
One more myths to deconstruct. The largest population group to benefit from Affirmative Action were White women.
Something that was genuinely helpful in my youth - going to a "white" university in Apartheid South Africa - was that the university offered a "bridging the gap" course to disadvantaged students. At the cost of an extra year of study, academically promising block students were prepared for university entrance based on attained marks like everyone else (under the government pretence of "separate but equal", the government couldn't then block their entry).
Our next door neighbour was a professor at a "black" university which was underfunded compared to the one I studied at, but he had a very interesting point of view - which is that black South African students struggled with course that assumed some exposure to technology (due to the poverty in which they had grown up), but there was no racial gap in disciplines requiring abstract reasoning, such as math.
Sadly after the end of Apartheid all of this was overtaken by tokenism and advancement of the politically connected - and guess what: the asians who previously were not white enough to be treated fairly, were now not black enough.
It’s curious why no one talks about the legal issue, rather than the policy issue - ie, is affirmative action prohibited under the 14th Amendment vs. is affirmative action good or bad as a policy? Those are two different questions, but virtually all the commentary focuses on the latter to answer the former. The SCOTUS decision makes the same error notwithstanding conservatives longstanding distaste for activist judges. Not any more, I guess.
Some of the comments here seem to be hilariously missing what seems to be the crucial point here. So let me spell it out. The question of how collective guilt works and ought to work - or *not* work - has been dealt with in a mammothly stupid and repugnant fashion by progressives for 50 some odd years. The inability think this through directly, rationally address questions of who ought to owe what to who under what circumstances, at the very least see Sins of The Father logic as the barbaric garbage that it is, think of the amelioration of inequalities and discrepencies in a sane and thoughtful manner that doesn't just re-introduce more crazy arbitrariness into the system - arbitrariness being why inequality is a bad thing in the first place!
Instead it's "let me tell you about racism's greatest hits" *as if that even remotely addresses the point instead of missing it in the most mind-locked manner possible.*
And every other Trump voter and cranky IDW guru feels the truth of this shit. Their motivations aren't usually pure. So what. This is an intuition providing everflowing fuel to the bonfires the right rallies around.
This particular thing just seems worthy of rage and rantings at this point. Because my god.
Jeff, You speak the truth. Thank you for seeing and saying so clearly.
Especially when it is about a pet sacred cow.
If slavery (or WW2 or pesticides or white people or the Bible) made people poor victims, how about giving preference to poor victims instead of people who claim or appear to be a certain color?
Cheers!
Watch out, you are going to be accused of going full MAGA Nazi for this article!
Good question. It was definitely not state funded (any kind of education for non-whites was funded to a fraction of white education). And the students would not have had anything like enough money. My guess would be, funded by a charitable trust.
I don't remember anyone having a condescending attitude to those students, because when they started 1st year they were at the same academic level as the rest of us - and everyone knew about the massive differences in education funding for people of different groups (I think "white" schools received literally 3x the funding of "black" schools").
In later working life, when "affirmative action" driven appointments and promotions were common, there was a bit of a tendency to write off affirmative action appointees. IMO this was rough on those black colleagues who had earned their positions - people did not take them seriously.
And also, it was not good for some of the AA appointees. In the rush to fill diversity quotas, people were hired who did not have the skills or experience to do their jobs. Leading to a reinforcement of racial stereotypes in the minds of white & asian colleagues, and misery for the AA appointees who were basically set up to fail.
Excellent. Well said, Jeff.
I have found how both he and I made a mistake. When looking up the number of applicants (Statista.com) the answer appears as a bar chart. I looked at the tallest and most leftward bar and mistook it for the answer. (71,164) But a closer look shows that this was only one of the schools. Add all bars together (and the applicants sitting in those bars) and you are right. 350k is the cumulative answer. I stand corrected!
My complaint was that you used annual live births as a substitute for population. You win, Let's check his math.
The number of appicants was 71,164 (See Statista.com) and the population of the USA is 334,967,580 (Census). Take the applicants and divide it by the Population and it appears that our hero was right. Answer = .2124507787
Beautifully savage!
> though the workarounds are obvious and probably little will change
The Twitter link here ( https://twitter.com/MattBruenig/status/1674584619985805317?s=20 ) doesn't work: clicking on it sends me to a "Something went wrong" error page, & trying to search for it redirects to a login screen. I don't know what the problem is; presumably it must still have worked when you posted this.