Is It Okay To Use Race To Break Ties?

[Athena]

In a 5-4 decision (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070628/pl_nm/usa_race_schools_dc), the Supreme Court has said that, no, school districts cannot use race as a tie-breaker when two students are trying to fill one spot in a public school. Clarance Thomas, the Supreme Courts only Black justice, wrote an independent opinion, referring to the Constitution as "colorblind", supporting his vote to disallow race to play a factor.

As I'm sure you're all well aware, this decision agitates the ever-present debate on racial equality. Liberals contend that this decision takes us back a step toward the segregation of our past while Conservatives assert that using race as a determining factor in any decision is it's own brand of discrimination.

I'm curious - Where do you stand on this and other similar issues like Affirmative Action? What, exactly, IS "equality"?

[gprime]

I'm very pleased with this outcome. Earlier this year, I applied to the University of Michigan in order to placate my parents. But I knew that I could never go there because of their admissions policy, which placed huge emphasis on being non-white. In the middle of this year's decisions, a vote was held during the elections, in which affirmative action for state universities was banned. I and several other qualified white friends were rejected (some of us were deffered first), while we saw several less qualified minorities, who had low GPAs and standardized scores, meager ECs, and no AP classes get in over us. As it turns out, they found a way around Prop 2 (http://www.discriminations.us/2007/02/michigans_last_mighty_push_for.html), thereby ensuring the acceptance of unqualified minorities at the expense of otherwise qualified whites.

While this ruling is a step forward, I think SCOTUSblog hit the nail on the head when they summarized the controlling opinion (http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/2007/06/analysis_justic.html). This is far from sufficient.

[Athena]

I've never been stepped over for admission or hiring, so my perspective is based on sheer principle.

I believe there is a vast difference between equality in the eyes of the law and giving an advantage to certain groups in the anticipation of discrimination. Equality: Making sure inner-city schools are funded as well as any other and creating a number-based application system for colleges. How asinine is it to wait until kids get to college to try and level the playing field?!? As a society, we should be fostering the most qualified candidates. Diversity is noble and beneficial, but not so much so that we should throw practicality to the wind.

Does racism exist? Absolutely. However, the white apologist attitude is driving hap-hazard, band-aid solutions that contradict true equality. We fucked up in the past...Bad. But Affirmative Action and other superficial anti-discrimination policies won't erase that history. People aren't equal if our government does not treat them equally.

[gprime]

How asinine is it to wait until kids get to college to try and level the playing field?!? As a society, we should be fostering the most qualified candidates. Diversity is noble and beneficial, but not so much so that we should throw practicality to the wind.

See, I'm not sure how much I could get behind that. When I went to private school in Canada, I had to get tested, because one of my teachers thought I was behind where I ought to be. It turned out that I was, contrary to the bitch's expectations, quite a bit above average in terms of intelligence, but merely took longer to grasp certain concepts because of the method by which I analyze and group information. A similar thing happened the next year when I moved to Boston. I went to a private school, and for English, we were divided into groups with different workloads based on our supposed reading ability. The teachers expected very little, and put me in the lowest of three levels for the first book. By the time the next one roled around, I was in the advanced group and ahead of everybody else in it. Since then, I've had several teachers tell me that I'm smarter than they are, and would make for a great substitute should they be absent. Had merit-based tracking been set in stone at an early stage, I'd have been screwed.

[brokenandtwisted]

I'm curious - Where do you stand on this and other similar issues like Affirmative Action? What, exactly, IS "equality"?

I don't think 'What is equality?' can be answered. There's a definition for the word but I can also consult a dictionary if one asks me 'What is time?'. Equality is a silly abstraction and human events that have occured will always trot on the idea of it...we seem to be a species that lives in the past rather than the present. Hence 'affirmative action'...

[I am Legend]

since i have never personally owned a slave i dont feel any type of "white guilt" , so ill just go on how i see it:

get the fuck over it, basically. if there was no racism, there wouldnt be any race issues. the weird part is that a white guy doesnt get to follow the same rules as a black guy, because i guess we whites still need to pay out those reparations or something.also, i do not give a fuck how un-PC this may sound, but blacks have used white guilt to their advantage for just about long enough now i would say, thankyouverymuch.

imagine theres no affirmative action
its easy if you try
we get jobs based on performance and skill
not skin color, becasue theres a slot to fill

like it or not, there are just as many black racists as there are white racists, and dont even get me started on those damn asians! they hate everyone!

personally, if a chic is hot, she is hot, color has nada to do with it.
there are just as many ugly black girls as there are white girls.
weirdly, there is a disproportionate amount of hot asian and latino women.

also, do not forget that GOD does not want us to breed with unpure races. (us as in us jewish peeps, so if you aint that, disregard as you are , in fact, already ruint)

in summary: when i can go outside and say to a black guy: yo nigga, what up?
without any fear of a blowout, ill relax a bit. till then, ill just make jokes about how i cant always say what i really think in the real world.

BTW: that Clarence Thomas moron needs to remember that some of those cats who wrote the constitution were slave owners. so color-blind may or may not be the right word to use.

shalom!

[CPL CHUD]

Affirmative action is a step back in racism. It's reverse racism and it tells people that because of their skin color they can get certain opportunities easier than their peers of a different skin color. Slavery was terrible, but what's also shitty is people wanting to get something for nothing, especially people wanting to get something for the suffering of others.

If anything we got to stop treating black people with kiddy gloves.

[swivel]

Great thread. I land on Athena's side of this issue. Injustices of the past should never be a guide for future corrective action, they should only serve as lessons to prevent the same mistakes from happening again.

The Native American/Casino bullshit falls into the same category of ruining the lives of a group to make up for ruining the lives of a past group.

Questions of ethics should be answered using the Rip Van Winkle method of rational discourse. Let's pretend that we all woke up from a deep slumber at this very moment. We are taught about the world using the facts known today, with none of the emotional baggage that is slogged through the generations of those that lived through the times we will study. I think that we would, at once, conceed that race has important psychological effects on individuals, as we all categorize people and rank them according to their similarity with ourselves, but that this process occurs even more frequently with gender, and less frequently with body weight, hair color, breast size, muscularity, height, etc...

Knowing this, we would also be aware that such prejudices have biological importance separate from ethical concerns. The biological impulse for a man to cheat on his wife is guarded against with coercion by law and force. We also need to guard against prejudiced behavior, but NOT by choosing a group and giving them rewards. That system is imperfect.

For instance, it is well documented that tall people make more money. Each inch of height you have over your competition is worth $1,000 a year in extra salary. We are partial towards tall people (this study did not look at basketball players, or anything of the sort, it compares the same people in the same position with the same experience, the only independent variable is height). We need to learn to be cautious of this prejudice.

Another study has shown that the wage difference between men and women is almost completely accounted for by the fact that men are aggressive in asking for a higher salary, while women are content to take what is offered. My wife and I recently had this exact experience as she was being offered jobs by multiple universities and I kept egging her to ask for more money, and she could not bring herself to do it. And we do not need to legislate anything here, we just need to educate. Make sure employers know that this is happening so they can either refuse to budge for men, or make slightly higher starting positions for women. Since it is a zero-sum game, men are making that extra buck at the EXPENSE of bashful women, with everyone unaware of what is happening.

If you look at black businesses, I guarantee that they show preferential treatment towards blacks. And Hispanics towards Hispanics. And skinny people towards skinny people. Rich to rich... ad infinitum...

When we correct only one of these, it cancels out the negating quality that all prejudice provides. If we correct for being black, they will continue to give each other an advantage, and we will legislate that all other groups must also provide the same advantages.

Here are the options:

We can attempt to micro-manage every single decision that every other human being makes to try and force every decision to conform to the whims of a very few who will be given the power to do so. This is the fascist/communist/socialist/totalitarian/theocratic/oligarchical way. No thanks.

We can pretend that people can overcome millions of years of innate drives that are hard-wired into ourselves by just "wishing for it to be so". This utopian fantasy actively kills people under the overwhelming weight of its sheer ignorance. 100 million people are so starved in Europe last century because a few morons truly believed that you can force everyone to sacrafice themselves for the welfare of strangers. NO THANKS.

Finally, we can hope that the various prejudices cancel each other out somewhat. We can educate everyone on how and why prejudice occurs so they can be vigilant OF themselves and FOR themselves. This should end the majority of prejudicial action, which I am certain happens without ill intent. We will reserve the judicial system for the heinous offenders, the violent hate-crimes, the molestations, the things that are already against the law.

[Athena]

See, I'm not sure how much I could get behind that. When I went to private school in Canada, I had to get tested, because one of my teachers thought I was behind where I ought to be. It turned out that I was, contrary to the bitch's expectations, quite a bit above average in terms of intelligence, but merely took longer to grasp certain concepts because of the method by which I analyze and group information. A similar thing happened the next year when I moved to Boston. I went to a private school, and for English, we were divided into groups with different workloads based on our supposed reading ability. The teachers expected very little, and put me in the lowest of three levels for the first book. By the time the next one roled around, I was in the advanced group and ahead of everybody else in it. Since then, I've had several teachers tell me that I'm smarter than they are, and would make for a great substitute should they be absent. Had merit-based tracking been set in stone at an early stage, I'd have been screwed.

I do believe you took my sentiment a bit more literally than I intended. 'Fostering the most qualified' can, but does not in this context equal "merit-based tracking". My suggestion was a more general one, that we should reward accomplishment with opportunity, not reward people simply because of a perceived disadvantage.

On another note - Now, I have no statistical evidence to support this theory of sorts, but I can't help but think that government regulation in matters like these make people lazy. I can't tell you how many times that, when speaking of charity, I've heard people say things like, "Why donate? Isn't that I pay taxes for?" In other words, the government is taking care of charity for them. Is this logic applying to discrimination? Are people out there saying, "Why be equitable? The government is taking care of it." Worse yet, are there young white people who feel slighted by policies like Affirmative Action and are actively attempting to "correct" it by discrimination of their own?

I have no idea how many, but I know these people are out there. I just can't help but feel that our racial policies will hamper true equality in the long run.

[licata]

This is a very difficult issue, and to be honest I don't have one answer.
It seems to me the standards for education are not universal, but more often than not children of lower income families do get left behind. But that begins at an early age in public education. At least that is what I see from my current surroundings.

Ideally, schools should look at merit and financial need first. It does seem ridiculous to use some quota for admissions based on race and not merit. To not get into school for the race you are is just horrible for anyone's future.

Something slightly related happened at the college I went to. I knew a couple of people who could not go because they did not qualify for enough financial aid based on the zip code they lived in. I knew one girl who had to drop out because she was working nights to pay for school and one year her aid got taken away. Then I began to talk to a few people who were foreign and very wealthy, and became enraged to learn some of these students were on full aid.

[gprime]

Something slightly related happened at the college I went to. I knew a couple of people who could not go because they did not qualify for enough financial aid based on the zip code they lived in.

That makes sense in the case of state schools. True though it may be that government has no place in the college industry, they remain involved. This occurs heavily on the state level, where each one controls a plethora of public universities. Part of the idea is to make higher educational opportunities available to a broader array of people. But the other goal is to keep people in-state and contributing to the local economy. Given that, and the face that state taxes make up a large portion of said schools' funding, it seems only rational that their aid would be given mostly, if not exclusively, to qualified local candidates.