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Kepler
Joined: 24 Sep 2007
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 Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2015 8:44 pm Post subject: Supreme Court Justices’ comments don’t bode well for AA |
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A white female student says she was racially discriminated against by the University of Texas.
"In a remark that drew muted gasps in the courtroom, Justice Antonin Scalia said that minority students with inferior academic credentials may be better off at 'a less advanced school, a slower-track school where they do well.'
" 'I don't think it stands to reason that it’s a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible,' he added....
"Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. questioned the value of diversity in at least some academic settings. 'What unique perspective does a minority student bring to a physics class?' he asked."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/us/politics/supreme-court-to-revisit-case-that-may-alter-affirmative-action.html
Scalia, Roberts, Alito, and Thomas will likely vote against it. However, a fifth justice will have to join them in order to overturn the lower court's ruling in favor of the university. Kennedy will probably be the swing vote as he is in other close cases. The original justification for affirmative action was to correct historical injustice. Then it became apparent that its beneficiaries were often people like Obama who didn't seem very oppressed and usually came from middle class/upper class backgrounds. Now promoting diversity seems to be justification. |
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Plain Meaning
Joined: 18 Oct 2014
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| Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2015 12:34 am Post subject: |
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It's not unlikely that Kennedy will punt again; the Court can't actually redress the petitioner's injury because her lawyers brought the case in her name, and not on behalf of a class. She has already graduated from another college. So there's a possible standing denial. The controversy around Scalia's rather mild exhibit of his foot-in-mouth affliction is meant to intimidate Kennedy.
That said, good. Get rid of Affirmative Action. If poor whites in West Virginia would lose out to Obama's daughters, 'diversity' doesn't really mean that much, at least in terms of fair access of the disadvantaged to elite institutions. |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2015 7:44 am Post subject: |
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| I wonder if people who dislike affirmative action feel the same way about military preference in federal hiring. In both cases, there is the chance of better qualified people being turned down due to belonging to a specific group, and in the governments case it brings the added disadvantage of decreasing the meritocratic principles which probably has some effect on government effectiveness and militarizes civilian agencies. |
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Plain Meaning
Joined: 18 Oct 2014
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| Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2015 10:11 pm Post subject: |
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Leon,
The elite university system isn't meritocratic, and its failure in this regard has very little to do with Affirmative Action. Indeed, I find that Affirmative Action to be a strange conservative bugaboo. Here is a sample of what I mean:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2012/11/30/do-the-ivy-league-universities-discriminate-against-asian-americans/
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| In fact, it is precisely because China’s admissions departments are relatively incorruptible that countless under-achieving children of wealthy Chinese parents study at American universities. And because such parents are so wealthy, they can afford to buy — repeat buy — their children places at top U.S. universities. In the unkindest cut of all, [Ron Unz] explains the relatively high standards of objectivity in China’s schools in these terms: “China’s ruling elites may rightly fear that a policy of admitting their own dim and lazy heirs to leading schools ahead of the higher-scoring children of the masses might ignite a widespread popular uprising. This perhaps explains why so many sons and daughters of top Chinese leaders attend college in the West: enrolling them at a third-rate Chinese university would be a tremendous humiliation, while our own corrupt admissions practices get them an easy spot at Harvard or Stanford, sitting side by side with the children of Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and George W. Bush.” |
The donor system is highly corrupt. That said, I'm not sure I'd even want a supremely meritocratic system, i.e. the Chinese university system. It would be better to have a much more flat university system, such as Canada's. You went to McGill? Fantastic, but many of the schools in Canada are just as good. There's no reason to favor Harvard graduates so highly. Sure, Harvard might be legitimately the best, but is it so much better than other schools? No. The elite American fixation on the brand of school is either superficial or corrupt, and I would say that its not superficial. |
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sirius black
Joined: 04 Jun 2010
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| Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2015 5:22 am Post subject: |
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1. AA isn't specifically for Blacks. You could be a white male and still qualify under certain circumstances (handicap, etc.)
2. White women have benefited the most by far.
3. Look at the history of AA. The civil rights groups neither demanded it or created it. They were essentially told, this is how we are going to help you. Then almost immediately (Bakke case), they were told it isn't fair and its reverse discrimination. So, these days the GOP has used them to turn out the votes on a people who were told it was part of their remedy with no input in the first place. Sidenote, same with social welfare. The ONLY thing the civil rights groups ask for was fairness and equality. Nothing more, nothing less. Culturally its proven that it doesn't happen. We have ended discrimination in hiring of European groups who faced in the 19th and 20th centuries. You can apply as O'Reilly, Goldstein or Rizzo with no fear of discrimination based on your country of origin. Almost none with a female name of European origin or even Asian origin, man or woman. Still not the same if they see Miguel Gonzalez or Jamal Washington on a CV. Assumptions are made and EVERY study that does CV similarities suggest that.
4. Its hard to say its hurt whites as a collective. The stats still bear out whites are on top in all categories. That girl was still going to go to college. There are several thousand other colleges she could go to.
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2015 6:04 am Post subject: |
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| Plain Meaning wrote: |
Leon,
The elite university system isn't meritocratic, and its failure in this regard has very little to do with Affirmative Action. Indeed, I find that Affirmative Action to be a strange conservative bugaboo. Here is a sample of what I mean:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2012/11/30/do-the-ivy-league-universities-discriminate-against-asian-americans/
| Quote: |
| In fact, it is precisely because China’s admissions departments are relatively incorruptible that countless under-achieving children of wealthy Chinese parents study at American universities. And because such parents are so wealthy, they can afford to buy — repeat buy — their children places at top U.S. universities. In the unkindest cut of all, [Ron Unz] explains the relatively high standards of objectivity in China’s schools in these terms: “China’s ruling elites may rightly fear that a policy of admitting their own dim and lazy heirs to leading schools ahead of the higher-scoring children of the masses might ignite a widespread popular uprising. This perhaps explains why so many sons and daughters of top Chinese leaders attend college in the West: enrolling them at a third-rate Chinese university would be a tremendous humiliation, while our own corrupt admissions practices get them an easy spot at Harvard or Stanford, sitting side by side with the children of Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and George W. Bush.” |
The donor system is highly corrupt. That said, I'm not sure I'd even want a supremely meritocratic system, i.e. the Chinese university system. It would be better to have a much more flat university system, such as Canada's. You went to McGill? Fantastic, but many of the schools in Canada are just as good. There's no reason to favor Harvard graduates so highly. Sure, Harvard might be legitimately the best, but is it so much better than other schools? No. The elite American fixation on the brand of school is either superficial or corrupt, and I would say that its not superficial. |
I used to work for a company that recruited foreign students (not to the US) and in this country the standards were lower for foreign students than domestic ones, but rules and regulations allowed the schools to charge foreign students more. I would be ok with charging chinese princelings more if it would subsidize things for others, but I'm unconvinced the money is used in a way to help other students.
As to your second point, I agree and disagree to an extent. I have attended both an average state school and an elite school. I have taken undergrad and grad classes at Harvard (my school allowed for cross registration) and the elite schools are legitimately better in several ways. At the state school I had professors who were good teachers, at Harvard and my grad school I had professors who were brilliant and at the top of their field who played major roles in the things they taught about and were able to introduce me to others like them, and so on and so forth. The one thing that was a little bit surprising was that I did not find the students at the elite schools to be that much different. Sure the lower level students at the state school were much lower than at the elite schools, and possibly the highest level 1% students might have been more brilliant, but other than that it seemed pretty similar. |
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Plain Meaning
Joined: 18 Oct 2014
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| Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2016 6:15 pm Post subject: |
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Scalia's Death makes Seven for the Fisher Case
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The Court will now make its decision—expected by the end of June—based on the votes of only seven justices, rather than the usual nine. Justice Elena Kagan, a former Dean of Harvard Law School, recused herself because she worked on the case during her tenure as U.S. Solicitor General.
“It’s still possible with only seven justices participating that what’s happening in Texas could be struck down,” Peter F. Lake ’81, a professor at Stetson University College of Law, said.
Scalia was “one of the strongest voices on the Court opposing race-conscious admissions,” Lake added. Commentators criticized Scalia for a December statement suggesting that some African-American students did not belong at elite universities.
Without Scalia’s reliably conservative presence in the Court, the Fisher decision could be even more closely contested.
Lake said the remaining members of the Court are now widely perceived as split, with three liberal and three conservative justices and one “swing vote,” held by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. |
I still say the smart money is on an ambiguous result of some kind.
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| Lake expressed concern about the possibility that the Supreme Court’s decision on Fisher could bring further confusion and litigation about admissions processes. |
The Court may well punt on this one. |
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Plain Meaning
Joined: 18 Oct 2014
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| Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2016 5:30 pm Post subject: |
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It is late June. You know what that means!
The opinion came down in Fisher v UT Austin. Kennedy joined Sotomayor, Breyer, and Ginsburg. The race-conscious admissions program in use when Abigail Fisher applied to the university was lawful under the Equal Protection Clause.
http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/06/opinion-analysis-a-brief-respite-for-affirmative-action/
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There were three facets of the Kennedy opinion for the majority that stood out:
First, that opinion referred to the Texas approach as “sui generis” — a Latin phrase for one-of-a-kind. That was the strongest indication that Kennedy wanted to signal lower courts that any different plan would have to satisfy the tough test that Kennedy himself had crafted when the Fisher case was decided by the Court in 2013 — a test that, he concluded on Thursday, the UT-Austin plan had passed.
Second, it stressed that campus leaders in Austin should not interpret the new decision as necessarily meaning that they could continue to follow the same policy, with its partial use of race, without changing it if circumstances change.
Third, it expressly ordered the university “to engage in constant deliberation and continued reflection regarding its admissions policies.” This phrasing appeared to forecast a future vulnerability for the university if it did not regularly review its policy in the future to see if the consideration of racial factors was still necessary to achieve its academic goal of a racially diverse student body. |
As it is a Kennedy opinion, it will likely perplex academic administrators for years to come. |
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