Mastodawn

Dr. Damien P. Williams, Magus Jun 29, 2023

Unsurprised that the conservative majorty on this Supreme Court struck down affirmative action. I'm Anti-surprised, in fact. They'll likely do the same thing to student debt relief, later today or tomorrow.

It'll take about 3 years to see the full effects of today's decision across the higher education landscape; these justices won't care then, either.

If you want real remedies for centuries of inequity, inequality, and injustice, this court isn't where you need to go.

Hit the ballot box, the city council chambers, or the streets, instead.

What a sad mess.

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🎓 Doc Freemo

🇳🇱Jun 29, 2023

@Wolven I really need to look into this affirmative action ruling to get an opinion on it... Obviously it **sounds** like a good thing, as affirmative action was never a good way to solve the very real racism problem we have. But my fear is that better solution arent going to replace it so it still leaves a gapping problem.

Striking down the loan forgiveness stuff makes sense, we should have always been giving free education to future generations, but forcing loan company's to pay other peoples bills for an otherwise legitimate agreement, no thats just wrong.

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Louis Ingenthron Jul 1, 2023

@freemo Affirmative action has its problems, but especially for higher education, it does far more good than harm.

Plus, remember, the prestige colleges already have a reverse-affirmative-action system in place called "legacies". There really ought to be a counter-balance.

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🎓 Doc Freemo

🇳🇱Jul 1, 2023

@LouisIngenthron If you give advantages based on poverty, not race, you solve both issues...

On the one hand so long as racism exists and minorities disadvantaged they will be a larger portion of the group in poverty and thus would get helped.

Since its based on poverty then it isnt explicitly racial in nature so address the racism concerns.

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Louis Ingenthron

@freemo The problem with that is that proving poverty is much more onerous than proving race. That adds paperwork hurdles that have to be jumped, usually not by the applicant themselves, but by their guardians. This phenomenon is responsible for some of the poorest families in our country failing to qualify for free student lunches for their kids.

Given that no system is perfect, requiring representation equal to the demographics of the overall population in our most critical institutions seems to be the best step forward we can reasonably expect at this time.

But also, on the other side of the equation, even the population of rich kid students shouldn't be homogenously white... it should apply to all, not just the scholarship crowd.