Tuesday Sober Thread: All In The Name Of Diversity

I'm sure that Bob Jones also accepts black students, but we all know that place is whiter than bird shit in the snow and it's fucking staying that way.

 

I'm very much of two minds on an issue like this.

One the one hand, anyone who thinks the problems affirmative actions is designed to fix don't plague our society anymore is just plain wrong. Sure, most everybody today would say legalized slavery and separate but equal and all other types of overtly racist and segregationist beliefs aren't really an issue anymore. But de facto racism is still a very real problem. Minorities, on average, face a great many more obstacles in achieving an equivalent level of success than a white person would, on average, and this becomes very evident when you see just how underrepresented minorities are in places like college, corporate America, etc.

So it's clear that we have a problem, and while AA may not be the best solution, and may even be no better than a temporarily stop-gap measure, it's at least a step forward in the sense that it makes light of and attempts to solve a problem most (white) people don't really like to talk about, and certainly wouldn't go out of their way to solve.

However.

I think you have to concede that most real-world implementations of AA that you'd find today result in less qualified persons being hired/accepted some of the time. Certainly not all the time, perhaps not even most of the time, but at least a non-trivial amount of the time. I just don't see that as being debatable -- because I've seen it with my own eyes. I saw it in college, and I've seen it in the workplace, both at my firm and at firms my friends work at.

And the real problem with a system like that, in my eyes, is not the type 1 error where a qualified person gets left out, it's the type 2 error where someone who truly can't succeed in a given environment is admitted or hired and, of course, fails. Because as long as that keeps happening under the auspices of an institutionalized system like AA, the system designed as a bandage to bridge the earnings and success gap for the generations stuck between years of overt, legalized racism and the (hopefully) years of racism not existing is used by its many opponents as ammunition against the very problems its trying to solve.

 

Something along these lines?

Spoiler

 

Based off the fact you went to an event in person and had them mail you the t-shirt instead of picking it up on the spot leads me to believe you have been scammed. The fact that you fell for this scam makes me think AA is the reason you have a job, and BL1Y does not.

 

I know a couple white Howard students. I think they do pretty well for themselves generally, but they're likely not to be the norm. Shrug.

They said that they had run out! At the event I believed them, but I have to admit, I fucking never see the Fake-Law-School-Graduation-To-Sell-Fake-T-Shirts scam coming. Fourth time this has happened goddamn it.

Also, I don't know if you heard, but BL1Y has a website. He doesn't like to talk about it, but it's going to make him millions once law books start buying ad space.

 

Translation: They only get laid when some girl loses a bet or is being hazed into doing it by her sorority.

 

Come on, we all saw Road Trip:

 

Actually, one of them gets laid pretty much as much as he wants to. He's a good-looking guy though and pretty cool. No homo? A little homo. Where am I? What is all this glitter?

 

Which, considering the ratio of freshman sorority girls to white guys, this means quite frequently.

 

I think I have this thread figured out! Affirmative action is needed because humans are inherently racists. However sometimes it is not implemented well, and this causes problems. Basically it is like every other problem in this world where some sort of philosophy is implemented by bureaucrats.

 

This is pretty much my philosophy, can anyone think of a program that actually helps its target audience in the manner it is suppose to? Now we can either believe that each individual program was independently implemented in a uniformly poor manner, or we can believe that that implementing ideals through legislature on a large scale doesn't work.

It reminds me of my old company where 10 different analysts would make the same mistake over and over again. Management can either believe that they hired 10 shitty analysts or believe they have one shitty process. When you have uniform issues like this, it's usually the system, not the components.

 

There are two ways in the US which affirmative action gets implimented. The first is what you describe, certain types of quotas government agencies are required by law to abide by. The second is how affirmative action applies to private businesses. Private businesses in general can hire whomever and however they want, however their employment practices can be called before the EEOC, which can result in civil and punative penalties. In light of that many privite businesses do have some sort of internal AA policy, the effectiveness and efficiency obviously varying from company to company.

I don't know anyone who would disagree with this, but the thinking here is that until such problems are fixed (if they can ever really be fixed) AA addresses some of the inequities borne of those problems.

 

I can speak to the preferential treatment thing a bit. I worked for the Department of Highways for a bit in college, and at least in West Virginia, a certain percentage of jobs that were contracted out had to be done by DBE's (Disadvantaged Business Enterprises). The contractor for one the jobs I was one was a DBE because the owner of the company was a woman, who took over the business from her father. They were very shitty in their planning and organization (though this wasn't her fault. She had little to do with the company; her ex-husband ran it for the most part), but they got plenty of work due to their DBE status, as there weren't a ton of DBE's in WV (imagine that). Just throwing that out there.

I agree with the consensus we seemed to have reached in this thread. Yes there are still plenty of biased people out there, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and something does need to be done to ensure as much fairness as possible. However, like any time you try to use a one-size-fits-all solution, there are several problems.

 

It's astounding to me how quickly some peoples' hearts bleed for blacks and Latinos, while these same people are quick to throw Asians and whites under the bus.

280 points. 230 points. That's the automatic advantage black students have over Asian and white students on the SATs when it comes to college admissions. If you're Asian and you score 1600, it's the same as a black person scoring 1320.

Let's think about a Japanese American kid and an African American kid who grew up next each other; they're from the same neighborhood, go to the same high school, parents make the same amount of money... yet the black kid automatically gets a leg up for the Korean kid when it comes to college admissions, worth on average 280 points.

Other highlights from Espenshade and Chung's paper to put 280 and 230 points in context:
- Legacy admissions only worth 160 points
- Recruited athletes only get 200 points
- In absence of affirmative action, 4/5 of the admission spots that now go to blacks and hispanics would go to Asians

Affirmative Action is only legal due to judicial decree, as its incompatible with the 14th amendment, which states: "no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." State-sponsored affirmative action seemingly violates the 14th Amendment, but courts have ruled that affirmative action serves "compelling state interests" and have thus granted an exception for affirmative action.

So race cannot be used as a factor... except when it's to advance government interests. To what extent should government have its own interests at the expense of private citizens? Should the government be able to override the constitution at will?

Why should we punish people because other people who happen to look like them or have similar ancestral background as they do happen to be successful? Why should we reward people because other people who happen to look like them or have similar ancestral background as they do happen to be unsuccessful?

If affirmative action is a form of reparations to compensate blacks and maybe Native Americans, why do latinos get to reap the rewards and Asians suffer the consequences? I can think of no form of discrimination latinos have suffered Asians haven't. The only difference is that South Asians and East Asians have been relatively competent and latinos have not. And let's remember that not all African Americans are the descendants of slaves, and not all European Americans are the descendants of slave-owners. As a side note, black Americans are on average 13-20% of European descent. And finally, how long are whites supposed to continue to let blacks take a pound of flesh? In perpetuity? At what point do we hold blacks responsible for their own underachievement without blaming nebulous white oppression?

If affirmative action is to ensure a diversity of opinions on campus and in the workplace, then what happened to judging people on the content of their character and not by the color of their skin a la MLK? There should be no reason to think someone is able to bring greater diversity of opinion to the table if character != race.

With these rhetorical questions in mind, I suspect that righting past wrongs and promoting diversity of voice and opinion are just flimsy pretexts to permit racial balancing and transfer opportunities from whites and Asians to blacks and latinos. There are many more organizations representing the interests of blacks and latinos than there are whites and Asians ("the U.S. government is an organization that represents the interests of whites! HAR HAR!"). Of course, for white people to stand up for their own interests, they're called racists.

As long as no one's being discriminated against, let's just the let the chips fall where they may. And no, just because one group happens be unsuccessful at something doesn't automatically mean they must be getting discriminated against (the Chicago fire-fighters brouhaha comes to mind).

 

You know, I assumed you'd be in this thread eventually Bryan. After all, you can't spell Bryan without A-Y-N, amirite?

Eh? Ehhhhhhh?

Because white people still receive disproportionate privilege. If you'd like to have a debate as to whether white privilege exists, we can, but I don't want to tangent the thread too much.

Dude, do you realize this shit, like, just happened?

It's not centuries and centuries ago. It's like, people I know. People in my family. I think Louis CK said it best: "slavery wasn't forever ago. It was basically two 75 year old ladies dying, back to back." That is absolutely NOTHING when it comes to building up a culture, and the fact that you're so immediately defensive is really curious to me (you're not white, right?)

"Letting the chips fall where they may" is only fair when the playing field is equal. If you honestly think the playing field is generally equal, then let's discuss that. I don't.

 

I'd like to comment on this from a different angle, because I've seen it in person in a number of different situations over the past 10 years both in my capacity as an employee and as a consultant. A huge area of exposure for corporations is not just in the hiring process, but in the firing process. I can cite at least 5 instances where a minority (sexual disposition or race) was in a c-suite position, but largely underperformed his/her peers and/or company expectations, and was kept in that position because of the feared repurcussions.

I used to help companies prepare for sale and raise capital, and I can tell you a number of times where the potential suitor backed away from a deal over concerns of the talent level of certain executives. White male, 40-50 years old -- fire him in a heartbeat; happens all the time. Black female or gay male -- you'll have lawsuits up the wazoo. When you're talking about mid-6-figure to 7-figure salaried employees, you can get yourself into a whole host of trouble - even if you are making decisions based on the merits of performance alone.