anjiUS Supreme Court reverses affirmative action, ending race-conscious college admissions
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/29/1181138066/affirmative-action-supreme-court-decision
These social issues vasculate by design to keep the peasants of every color at each other’s throats.
The only real war is class war, too bad our owners propagandized us from birth to refuse to fight that particular war.
Now by all means, carry on fighting over the social wedges that are largely caused or exacerbated by our rigged capitalist dystopia.
Just don’t be late for work.
OOFshootHonestly, if we could stop this cultural race war for like two seconds we'd have a way better society. I just went healthcare end high speed rail.
TheRtRevKaiserIs there some reason that we can't work to have a more equitable society racially and economically? It's not a zero sum game, we can care about and accomplish more than one thing at a time...
dedaleReducing economical disparities will solve the so-called "racial" inequalities.
Affordable education, housing and care for all don't necessitate discrimination, even positive.
When an university degree costs hundreds of thousands, the problem isn't the ethnic makeup of the happy few who can afford it, it's scarcity itself.
European state manage to fund a higher education for pretty much all of those that care to try it, it is not an impossible dream.
edit: to clarify, I don't think ending affirmative action before making any general progress is a good idea or will do any good.
just to keep eyes on the prize and be aware of diversion tactics.
TheOlympianExactly. Even if the real villain was capitalism all along (spoiler: it is), we can't abandon all of these battles along the way in hopes of winning the war in the end. The fight will take generations and we need to win ground on multiple fronts to have any hope of real, honest to goodness, change.
Sorry, in my mind forgetting about race problems meant that everyone stopped being racist and shit. The economic inequalities associated with race wouldn't disappear overnight, but they would eventually go away since social safety nets would obviously benefit the poorest people the most. But basically that flip comment was imagining a world where everyone really was colorblind.
No worries. And yeah, in a world where everyone magically had no conscious or unconscious bias, I suppose that by fixing economic inequality we would eventually address most other inequities associated with race. And that's nice to think about.
But I don't think I have to tell you that we don't live in that world, so the bias (conscious and unconscious) remains, and the systemic inequities also remain.
And it's fine to imagine a better world, but if there are folks arguing that actually, addressing the plight of minorities is a distraction from the more important "class war" and that winning that fight will magically fix everything else, your comment comes across as more of the same.
How would one sustainably protect/save the Jews (and all the other victimized groups) without first dismantling the Nazi regime?
Sure you can free this camp and that camp, but if the machine, the source that propagates it and maintains it remains intact, you’re addressing a symptom of the primary cause.
You can't reduce all of society's problems to one source. We need to improve the lives of everyone, and we don't do that by ignoring the plight of minority groups. We can accomplish more than one good at a time.
Not all, but nearly all.
Abortion should be legal and available to all women, that said, around 40% of them are done for economic reasons: …biomedcentral.com/…/1472-6874-13-29
Hence the issue is greatly exacerbated by our capitalist dystopia.
I don’t think I need to l source the economic growth incentive for exploiting undocumented immigrant labor they invite, while at the same time propagandizing half the country to hate them so they don’t gain social footing to get fair pay.
Climate change, hmmm…
Collapse of the nuclear family and birth rate, hmmm…
K-12 educational collapse due to tax breaks for a certain economic class in almost every state, hmmm…
Higher ed being bastardized from a societal necessity to a for profit indentured servant factory, hmmm…
Food deserts and urban decay from big box stores killing main street to eliminate threats and then pulling out of those neighborhoods once succeeding leaving nothing but abandoned disaster areas, hmmm…
I’m sure there are some national problems that aren’t caused by, substantially exacerbated by, or intentionally stoked for division by our owner class through their captured governments and bully pulpit, but without addressing our rigged economy and the wealth class gaining more hard power year after year, I’m sorry but it’s deck chairs by comparison.
Understanding why women seek abortions in the US - BMC Women's Health
Background The current political climate with regards to abortion in the US, along with the economic recession may be affecting women’s reasons for seeking abortion, warranting a new investigation into the reasons why women seek abortion. Methods Data for this study were drawn from baseline quantitative and qualitative data from the Turnaway Study, an ongoing, five-year, longitudinal study evaluating the health and socioeconomic consequences of receiving or being denied an abortion in the US. While the study has followed women for over two full years, it relies on the baseline data which were collected from 2008 through the end of 2010. The sample included 954 women from 30 abortion facilities across the US who responded to two open ended questions regarding the reasons why they wanted to terminate their pregnancy approximately one week after seeking an abortion. Results Women’s reasons for seeking an abortion fell into 11 broad themes. The predominant themes identified as reasons for seeking abortion included financial reasons (40%), timing (36%), partner related reasons (31%), and the need to focus on other children (29%). Most women reported multiple reasons for seeking an abortion crossing over several themes (64%). Using mixed effects multivariate logistic regression analyses, we identified the social and demographic predictors of the predominant themes women gave for seeking an abortion. Conclusions Study findings demonstrate that the reasons women seek abortion are complex and interrelated, similar to those found in previous studies. While some women stated only one factor that contributed to their desire to terminate their pregnancies, others pointed to a myriad of factors that, cumulatively, resulted in their seeking abortion. As indicated by the differences we observed among women’s reasons by individual characteristics, women seek abortion for reasons related to their circumstances, including their socioeconomic status, age, health, parity and marital status. It is important that policy makers consider women’s motivations for choosing abortion, as decisions to support or oppose such legislation could have profound effects on the health, socioeconomic outcomes and life trajectories of women facing unwanted pregnancies.
KwakigraThe latest in a series of measures ensuring that future generations will be mired in problems which we've been inching away from for centuries only to dive right back into them on a regular basis.
I see this as a good thing, if ai have a candidate that is better than another, why would I deny the 1st candidate admission just because of the 2nd’s color
My parents were both in school during desegregation. We are less than a generation from people of color being denied the right to equality in education. Hell, Bob Jones University v. United States was decided in 1983. That sort of systemic inequality doesn't just go away overnight. You have to take intentional steps to address those inequalities, and affirmative action is one of those steps. Color Blind policies fail to address systemic racism because they assume we live in a post-racial society, but the affects of centuries of inequality still exist everywhere in our society.
a candidate that is better than another
Better how? Any metric you use to measure candidates can arguably already be biased towards people who didn’t grow up poor.
Better grades? Students who attended well funded schools get better grades. That’s indirectly measuring wealth
More extracurricular activities? Students from wealthy families have more opportunity to take part in extracurricular activities. That’s indirectly measuring wealth.
Ability to pay? That’s just straight up measuring wealth.
While not the greatest solution, affirmative action was meant to give people born into bad situations a way to climb out. Education is directly linked to wealth and requiring wealth to get an education keeps poor people poor.
The problem with this thinking is that especially in education, the education level of the parents matters a lot. If you have parents with no higher education, the child is not likely to get one either. This means that groups that were previously disadvantaged will have fewer kids that attend, and their kids will have fewer kids that attend, and this goes on and on.
In order to break the cycle, you need to push the opposite direction for a while. Otherwise you’re disadvantaging children for something that happened to their great-grandparents.
How Parents' Education Level Affect Children's Success
It is no secret that parents are the primary influence in their children's lives, guiding what they eat, where they live and even what they wear. But parents influence their children in a far more important way: Research shows that parents' education level has a significant impact on their children's success.
There are many many reasons.... and everyone replying to you is talking about them all
a "better" candidate by most academic standards is more likely to be wealthy and, in the US, that means more likely to be White. Simply put, White people have more generational wealth, which makes them more able to participate in extracurriculars, more time to study, less general stress.
If a college wants to create a more holistic education than just academic, it benefits them to have a diverse student body. The more diverse the student body, the more tolerant and open minded your graduates will be. They'll be more open to listening to people that don't look like them, and society will be better for it.
and then there's 3) The elite in this country have always been and thus have been biased towards Straight White Men. Without guardrails in place, they will select more Straight White Men, and we will regress.
You see it as a good thing because you're a cracker-ass cousinfucker.
Blatant racism much?
Meritocracy should not be replaced with anything else. Full stop.
demvoterY’all need to fucking vote blue in every election to stop this shit. No third party shit, no “both sides,” no “my vote doesn’t matter.” If you actually want to stop this kind of stuff, you have to vote for democrats in every election.
This includes primaries. If the left isn't radical enough for you, you can change that within the primaries. It's wild how many complaints about the Dems come from people who only vote in presidential election years.
hihusioand local elections. take a cue from the wingnut playbook where they've taken over school boards, for example, and push 'em further left.
slicedcheesegremlinI tried this because of all the calls to focus on local elections, but I found that in my area there werent any dems running for office. The choice was between "Republican party of Trump" and "Republican party of Reagan," and in one position there was only one person running unopposed, so I didn't bother.
I'm UK but we are similar with local elections, my mates seat in district council was conservative (our center right) for ever, so much so the candidate in last 2 election (8years) was uncontested and so just as a protest he decided to run as a labour (center left) in the last election. His local party paid him lip service but really only access to a printer and a few materials and a tiny spot on a blogwebpage. He never thought he would get in. He just wanted to be a protest so people didn't have to either tick con or not vote
But as he talked to people on doorstop he found more and more unsatisfied with conservatives.byhen come election day he got 60% of the vote, support for the con has collapsed. He now has found himself going ot district council meetings and in a coalition of power as the council swung to lib-lab-green as many other seats had similar results.
That's awesome, but I doubt party loyalty would let that happen in the U.S.
n1ckn4m3I think it's a mix of things. I agree a lot of people don't participate in the primaries and they really should, but I'd also stress the importance of elevating the quality of the candidates we have. I don't believe any of the primary candidates right now have any idea what it's like to live in the USA as an "average" person. For starters, the average age of US citizens is 39, but the average age of the 3 current candidates is 74, with each of them being a minimum of 30 years older than the average American. I am not trying to promote ageism in any way, but I would really prefer if we had leadership that was less removed time-wise. I just don't personally believe that someone at 70 or 80 has any reasonable idea what it's like to be an American in the 30-40 age range right now -- their experiences with that age come from a time prior to the advent of cellular telephones, social media, personal computing technology, etc.
On top of that, even if you look past the age gap, the choices we have so far really don't instill great confidence.
RFK Jr is an admitted openly vocal anti-vax believer and also a vocal science denier (he still promotes belief in the link between vaccines and autism which has been systemically dis-proven), neither of which are popular positions to the left and will likely cost him votes. Biden has a low approval rating and a lot of Democrat voters don't see him as a strong or effectual president, but he's likely to get the nomination because he previously beat Trump and seems to be the defacto "if you're voting against Trump instead of voting for someone, vote for him" nominee. Marianne Williamson is at least a fresh, non-dynastic face in the political race with a reasonable track record as an independent, but because she'd been an independent until 2019 and because she's female there's a subsection of voters who will adamantly refuse to vote for her regardless of her political stance, making her unlikely to win the nomination over Biden.
I really hope that we start to see greater candidate diversity in the future and I agree that it starts with showing up to vote, I just wish we had candidates that felt more representative of the party ideals and also of our overall population than what we're getting now.
The difference is: what can you hope for vs. what can you actively do.
This goes back to not voting in every election. Groups that invest (money, time, votes) on local races (city council, school board) have a greater variety to pick when one of these people goes on to higher office (state-level, county-level) and then goes on to federal office.
The primaries are already too late - it's all about the local races.
This is a very valid point -- elections don't stop at the primaries either!
some states don't have primaries; they have caucuses. which means you get to spend an entire day in a room with a bunch of other people arguing.
if you're conflict avoidant, that's the equivalent of a root canal without anesthesia.
I’m sure people like Bloomberg or Rick Caruso are very happy with this ruling. It cements more power into the elite and legacy admissions.
Democrats are a big party - Republicans can get away with voting for whatever R exists while Dems have to constantly fight and filter out billionaire bullshit artists.
voting blue because that's the only option --- what? why? how did this happen?
Because that's how republicans are recorded to vote republican every time, so realistically other choices are just splitting the votes and leaving the republican votes strong.
For the forseeable future unless the republican base breaks they win elections where others try to vote on third party. Because they're voting purely for party and just assuming party is looking out for them.
aegisgfx877The damage caused by the christion nationalist takeover of the supreme court will take literally generations to undo, if it ever can be undone.
If you want to keep civil rights, women’s rights, worker’s rights, climate change actions, etc. then, yes. Maybe you’re just a fascist though.
So you agree with the policy that resulted in the Asian plaintiffs being denied admission to Harvard based on their race?
hrimfaxi_workI work in graduate education, and about 30% of my work is in admissions. My life just became very complicated.
Would Asians finally be less discriminated against in college admissions now? Your scores are all perfect but too bad we're full in the list of Asian admissions
Yes, instead different groups that were having their scores weighted against systematic discrimination they faced will no longer stand any chance of getting in even though the degree of grit and achievement to get there was higher, in the face of that discrimination they faced to get there. And so systemic discrimination will be that much more self-reinforcing.
Wealthy asian applicants, already over-represented in elite institution admissions, will likely be even more over-represented in the coming years. And as diversity falls, so will education standards, since diverse student populations have been conclusively shown time and time again to increase education standards.
It will be impossible for any but the most elite and wealthy universities to comply with race-blind admissions.
It's now open season to sue college admission offices and bilk them of everything you can. All you have to show is that there is a racial bias in their admissions, which you can define any way they want. Disproportionate representation from the population? Racial bias. Disproportionate representation compared to applications? Racial bias. Perfectly proportional representation according to some population statistic? Clearly affirmative action, since only through AA could you get your representation so proportional.
Think a university can be race-blind to avoid this? Nope. If the representation isn't perfectly proportional (and again, by what standard?) that shows inherent bias. So they'll have to collect race information and then compare that to their admission standards to CHECK That their process is suitably race-blind. Which means it isn't race blind. Which means it is AA or some shit.
And only wealthy universities have admissions departments large and staffed sufficiently to do this. Smaller and public universities will just be bulldozed.
Everyone will have totally different standards about what is fair and powerful, rich, likely racially advantaged/majority groups will sue like fuck to exploit their advantage while racially disadvantaged/minority groups do not have the means to do the same. The de facto outcome will end up discrimination.
The old system was the equivalent of admitting and acknowledging your bias and being transparent about your process and motivations. It directly made use of race as a factor to specifically target and avoid discrimination. The new system mandates that institutional and systemic discrimination be propped up and protected.
the worst generation at it again
Race shouldn't be a consideration in whether to admit a particular student. But it should be used on an ongoing basis to ensure that the admission process is applied fairly.
Then, if it's determined that there's a racial bias in admissions, the root cause should be analyzed and corrected. Are students of one race better prepared academically? That's a problem that needs to be fixed at the high school level (or earlier). If you admit students who aren't prepared for college-level courses, you either have to spend resources on remedial classes, or have a lot of students from that race drop out.
Are students of one race more able to pay? If we want everyone to have the same chance at education regardless of background, maybe college should be fully government-funded.
roldyclarkIt's about competitive college admissions. Rich students get college prep, tutors and extra curricular activities to give them an edge. Not having to work through high school is also a massive advantage.
That’s a problem that needs to be fixed at the high school level (or earlier).
What ability does a private university like Harvard have to affect the equity of primary or secondary education across the entire country? This sounds good, but who is doing the fixing? The same people who are stripping away the ability for colleges and universities to address inequity by considering it in their admissions policies are also strip mining public education. Maybe AA was a bandaid but ripping off the bandaid because it would be better to fix the injury, but having no ability or will to fix the injury, just means that now you're bleeding all over the place.
MidnitteMy favorite part is that military academies are exempt
"We can be racist, but not that racist"
What is racist about not including race in admissions?
Lefties think almost anything and nearly everything is racist or sexist...
They refuse to see the truth that, promoting social equity programs is discriminating against certain races and genders, to provide unfair advantages in favor of certain races and genders.
Lets discriminate against white males to help put an end to discrimination!
It doesn't work that way, you buffoons.
Instead of social equity, go create Social Goods... That are freely available to ALL people.
Suck elephant dick until you drown in cum, fascist trash.
literallyacatI'm sorry, did you meant the "checks and balances" that will be cashed for lobbying against the common interest of citizens? /j
As a first generation white student wanting to go to college, this makes me happy! Hopefully other first generation white students will get equal treatment too.
Ah yes because white people have it so rough
Some do, some don't. Class matters a lot more than race.
Not when you're any race but white.
Rofl yeah cause you and yours definitely had such a hard time. 🙄
I was too but my family was busy fuckin and working in autobody shops. It was nothing keeping them back but themselves.
What a massive win for Asian Americans! They'll finally be allowed to apply to universities and jobs across the nation without facing legal systemic racial discrimination. I'm surprised by the negativity in here. It's 2023. It's time to end systemic racial discrimination in America.
You're literally brain damaged.
This affects white people too. Asian students are often discriminated against when applying for colleges. I imagine that we’ll be seeing a lot of Asian students displacing both white and brown students as a result of this.
SternCan't universities just go by class instead of race in light of this and achieve a similar goal of lifting folks up?
yeah this is all insane and stupid. class has everything to do with it.