Top US college says diversity slumps after affirmative action ban
Top US college says diversity slumps after affirmative action ban
MIT says intake of some minority groups has fallen from 25% to 16% in one year after a Supreme Court decision.
Notice how black admissions drop. Clarence Thomas is a traitor, screw everyone else he's got his own.
He's an Uncle Ruckus for sure.
"I hope to harass and beat each and every black person I see with extreme prejudice!!"
Un-fucking-fortunately all this will do is reenforce the beliefs of all the assholes out there...
"See! If these people had any merit they'd have been accepted, they only got accepted before because they're (insert minority group here)!"
Large university who is fully in control of the people they choose to admit or decline says "there's no doubt they left out many qualified and promising applicants who would have excelled". How could the government do this!? Large university, who is completely in control of their applications process, wonders out loud.
They are not fully in control because the ruling didn't say that affirmative action couldn't be a government requirement. It said that a policy that enables affirmative action violates the constitution.
So, they are no longer asking applicants about race or ethnicity information. But they are expanding recruitment and financial aid to prioritize low income students.
I'm not agreeing with the court ruling, just clarifying the false representation of the issue with regard to the school.
I was lucky enough to see Ibram X. Kendi speak on anti-racism in higher education, and it was illuminating to realize that, as a white, cis-het man, I might not be able to work within the system to change the system without actively breaking laws.
The example he used was actually affirmative action and EEO standards and how the best an ally can do in certain situations might be to put your thumb on the scale even when it's technically illegal.
Basically, if you want to be anti-racist, you've gotta be Chaotic Good since the system is literally rigged against people of color.
Yeah that jumped at me as well.
The whole process is about accepting the most qualified, leaving people out who are qualified but didn’t meet the limit is kind of the whole thing.
Obviously they aren't since it was a SCOTUS decision that forced them to change their admissions.
FYI, places that already had affirmative action bans have partially got around this by at least pulling a percentage out of disadvantaged high schools (the kind with only one or two AP courses) since segregation still exists and it increases diversity. It's not quite as direct, though, even if it is easier to justify.
Another FYI on the history of affirmative action; the original argument that won over the court wasn't a social justice argument. It was a "diversity benefits everyone" argument --- in other words, white kids benefit from exposure to black and brown folks. Which is in fact true, but kind of a fuckery rational to begin with and one that doesn't seem to be winning over white folk the way it used to.
(Sorry for the fyis, just have to as the resident Education PhD on Lemmy)
As a white college graduate I can definitely confirm that I benefitted from black classmates as well as classmates of every other race. But also Jesus fuck that shouldn’t be the main reason why disadvantaged people of color get to get an education.
I’ll also add that a poverty quota in general is a good thing for colleges. I learned a lot from my impoverished white classmates as well.
There's generally an effort to get first generation college students, which is a better way to ultimately say poverty quota. It's a little easier to lie about, but it's what most schools like to brag about. There's also a lot more need based scholarships than there used to be, so that helps.
What changed in their admissions procedures as a result of the court ruling? Is it as simple as just not asking race on the application so they couldn't hold spots open to fill racial quotas? Or is it more complex than that?
They had a way of weighting a person's background as a part of their application. So imagine 2 students: -4.0 through high school, AP classes, a bunch of extra curriculars, great test scores -3.8 through high school, one AP class, no extra curriculars (because of family responsibilities), great test scores.
If the second student is a black student coming from a disadvantaged community, they legally can't consider that in their admission process.
More than 40% of the US population identifies as a race other than white, according to 2023 census data.
White students make up 37% of the new class, compared with 38% last year, while the percentage of Asian American students rose to 47% from 40%.
Seems like with or without affirmative action, white students are underrepresented at MIT. 60% of the population (minus those who didn't report?) vs 37-38% at the school. Or could there be a discrepancy about how white as a race vs Hispanic as an ethnicity is reported in the two different stats?
Anyway, white supremacy seems to have little to do with the issue. It's the Asian American proportion that went up and the black, Hispanic, and Pacific Islander proportions that went down.
Get out of here with your facts and numbers
In other news, water is wet.
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After reading about materialism and Marx, I know more about how the world works than I ever learned at university.
Meh. Brilliant poor kids of all races exist. Where is the help for them? Dumb rich black kids exist. Affirmative action has no place in a society that wants to get past racism.
enslaves an entire race for centuries and then racially segregates them for another, stripping them of generational wealth, education opportunities, equal treatment under the law due to prejudice, and otherwise on average putting them far behind their white counterparts through zero fault of their own
"Teehee we gave you equal rights (kind of sort of) so now it's egalitarian and paying you back would be unfair to everyone else. You have to run the same-length track as everyone else, and don't go asking for special treatment just because we shot you in the leg before the race."
What's wild to me is that legal segregation was like, not that long ago at all. It always feels like it's taught as ancient history but it was only half a lifetime ago, really... and still ongoing. It's not like this happened a thousand years ago and "you should really be over it by now", this was the experience of some people's still living grandparents and parents.
The idea that an entire demographic of people should magically recover and be equals again after like 30 years of half-assed "equality" after literal generations of slavery is fucking wild.
Absolute goblin energy to not recognize the ongoing effects of such a recent thing.
Sorry brother, not my problem. I was born well after those events occurred and so did these people.
Solving the problem of having an advantage based on race is not going to be solved by giving "the right" people an advantage based on race.
Economic factors should be the most weighted if any advantage is needed to be given.
And what if the white people have all the money and all the best schools? How do you want to get past racism then?
We can only build an egalitarian society on the ashes of the old.
Equity is a necessary evil only so long as we keep the current underlying power structures of capitalism.
That’s a strawman as all the kids who are accepted into mit are smart. We shouldn’t be colour blind when it comes to resolving inequalities while past and current racism is still largely affecting the United States.
If you want to fix the percentage of minorities being underrepresented in post secondary education affirmative action is the quickest way to do it even if we’re assuming “racism ended years ago” as the trauma and lack of generational wealth would still linger.
Racially agnostic support for exceptional achievers still exists, it's not an either-or proposition.
I think you could argue that affirmative action has no place in a society that has overcome the systemic issues caused by generation of racism. But that isn't the society in which we live. I hope to live in a world where one could abolish it and everyone can agree that the time has come. It isn't now.
America is not a meritocracy. It is big racist misogynist shithole with misogynist racists usually in charge of selection processes. "But we have legal protections against that!" you cry. Yeah, as long as you can prove it. If they don't say something or leave a paper trail, you can't prove shit. The system is still absolutely rigged against minorities and women and set up in a way that protections against any form of bigotry are so fucking vague as to be virtually unenforceable in all cases except the most extreme. Affirmative action is one of the ways to combat that. It, too, is not a perfect answer, but it is better than letting the bigots win. Indeed, the end game of Affirmative Action is to get enough women and minorities lifted up that the US can actually become a real meritocracy.
You mean like in the sense of free college education for all, or more in the sense of like close our eyes and pretend generational wealth isn't the largest factor to success?
And also just fucking racism. We don't need to pretend it's just economics. Studies have shown people with black names get selected for interviews less frequently.
Yep, when I was poor and smart, even though I was an immigrant, there were no scholarships for me. All the scholarships were for aspects you can’t change about yourself.
Have never supported affirmative action after that, it never seemed fair to me.
I’m sure others would think it’s fair, but the issue is, I’m the one who it affected negatively, and I think it’s unfair. I wish my opinion mattered.
Ok. Prove it.
Prove that affirmative action has no place.