11 ms·

Pretty much the whole thing in a nutshell is the one chart showing the same student as Asian, 25%, White, 36%, Hispanic 77%, and Black 95%. This is institution

by az226 2mo ago

Pretty much the whole thing in a nutshell is the one chart showing the same student as Asian, 25%, White, 36%, Hispanic 77%, and Black 95%. This is institutionalized racism. Perhaps Affirmative Action was needed in the past to kickstart the disproportionate enrollment demographics, but it was past due to get rid of it. The most interesting part following SCOTUS' ruling is that Harvard said it wouldn't change their ways, and nobody enforced the ruling.

robrenaud 2mo ago
Do consider the incentives of those developing the model that made those predictions. Afaict, it was not selected for purpose other than testimony.
orsorna 2mo ago
If you treat prestige acceptance rates as a derivative of the progression of racial policy, it absolutely makes sense why affirmative action is in place given the history of racial justice in America. Can you really claim that the trend won't reverse if purely meritocratic admissions are reinstated (disregarding legacy admits...although very unfair to disregard since their racial makeup heavily tracks with asian/white/etc) It's simply a single lever to change the racial makeup of the upper class. And certainly it goes both ways, but to simply remove it with no solution implies a regression to the former system, which was all but equal, much less equitable.
- sobellian 2mo ago
  Why are we treating it as a derivative, and what's the slope? Do we have proof it's not zero? Let's say Johnny and Kareem both study poli-sci at Harvard. When Johnny graduates with his gentlemanly C's, his dad puts in a word with his golf buddy and it's off to Wall Street. Kareem shoots his resume off through online portals but no one bites. He goes to law school and takes on even more debt. Johnny's sister, Sally, passes the bar on her third try and is hired by a white-shoe law firm. Et cetera.
dahart 2mo ago
> This is institutionalized racism. Perhaps Affirmative Action was needed in the past Affirmative Action is institutionalized discrimination, at least when used to promote some groups over others. (Though it didn’t start that way; it started as a call to be purely race-blind in hiring.) I wouldn’t call it racism though, because it’s not based on any belief that races have different capability, it is purely intended to correct systemic bias based on the belief that races are equally capable. > it was past due to get rid of it This might be true, but there are still achievement and pay gaps in the US. There are lots of debates about why, and I don’t want to start one. I’m just curious how else to solve systemic biases if they’re still here. The whole problem with cultural bias is it’s sticky and difficult and people don’t believe they have biases. Today’s politics has done a lot to convince me that we haven’t solved it yet, but at the same time I’ll be the first to point out that we’ve come a long way even in my lifetime. The last little bit might take longer to fix than suffrage did just because of how subtle the issues are. If we take any preferential treatment off the table, preferential treatment that tries to artificially force equal opportunity, the question is what’s the alternative? We might have momentum, and do nothing might work, but what if it doesn’t? Wouldn’t that also be a form of institutionalized discrimination, effectively, like it was before Affirmative Action existed?
- rayiner 2mo ago
  Lots of problems in society that are hard to fix. But there's nowhere else in society where our solution to a problem is to subject people who had nothing to do with the problem to unfair treatment. "Two wrongs don't make a right" is a good general principle.
  - dahart 2mo ago
    If only it were actually that simple and fixed with platitudes. Culture and belief is passed on from generation to generation, otherwise we wouldn’t have had the persistent problem in the first place. How do we fix a problem that we already have historical evidence that when left alone doesn’t go away on its own, that people who weren’t the original cause of the problem still, in fact, perpetuated it? How can we know people have nothing to do with the problem today, given that there are still discrepancies in outcome? I’m not defending Affirmative Action, the question at hand is what’s the alternative proposal?
digitaltrees 2mo ago
You didn't think the 50% admit rate for athletes, 40% admit rate for deans interest ie large cash donors, and 35% legacy admit rate were "the whole think"?
- Yizahi 2mo ago
  Honestly, the combination of extremely discriminatory, extremely corrupt, extremely predatory and then again discriminated differently by the fact if they are a sportsball player or not is rather amusing and at the same time baffling when observed from the other side of the globe. Of course it is too late by now, by have Americans considered maybe abolishing all that and admitting students only based on the exam results, with preference given to the kids with better results (or no preference)? And replacing professional sportsball with a 1 lesson/week of general fitness? Maybe then they won't need to get so much debt to study too.
  - aliasxneo 2mo ago
    > have Americans considered maybe abolishing all that and admitting students only based on the exam results No, because that's "not fair" to some groups.
    - digitaltrees 2mo ago
      If we are talking about a meritocracy and access to opportuity this doesn't even have to be about fairness the reality is if there are talented people that dont do as well on tests simply because they cant afford private tutors and prep courses maybe it makes sense to factor that in. But there is also a legitimate reason to pursue fairness. When a society loses upward mobility and becomes a calcified caste social unrest becomes an existential threat. When we ignore that disparity compounds and locks people out of the social system we risk destroying the very system that we benefit from.
  - purpleflame1257 2mo ago
    For the last 50 years you would get in severe trouble for using test scores alone thanks to disparate impact.
alistairSH 2mo ago
What data do you have to support the assertion that affirmative action is no longer necessary to ensure proper representation of minorities on campus? I'm open to arguments that there are better ways to achieve the goal of equitable access to higher eduction, but looking at enrollment numbers, the problem is far from solved.
- blagie 2mo ago
  The open question is the meaning of "proper representation:" - One which maximizes Harvard's power network? - Most likely to succeed in the future? - Representative of the general public by race? - Representative of the general public in other ways (e.g. religion, political affiliation)? - Academically, best-qualified right now? - Academically, most potential? At birth? Now? - Most likely to donate? Etc. However defined, Harvard has much modest discrimination by race compared to discrimination by religion, political affiliation, or home town. Harvard is 95% liberal, and much more so at the faculty level. If you look at the further-out evangelical, born-again Christian groups, or more conservative Muslim groups, the discrimination is even more extreme. Atheists are vastly over-represented, in contrast. Until one is aligned on goals and definitions, one can't speak of goals being met or unmet. Harvard can be -- and indeed, is -- racist against blacks by one definition, against whites by another, against Asians by a third, and so on.
  - alistairSH 2mo ago
    Fair questions and criticisms. I would prefer to have colleges [elite or otherwise] be generally representative of the population by race, religion, socio-economic background, etc. The problem, as I understand it, is "best qualified" is massively impacted by things like race, parental income, and other factors outside the control of college applicants. Society is far from a meritocracy.
    - ndriscoll 2mo ago
      In what way is that not meritocratic? The goal isn't to find the most Christlike figure born to the humblest beginnings and tempted thoughout his life by literally Satan to fall off the good path; it's to find the actually realized best qualified person. If you're the smartest, most knowledgeable, most conscientious, most humble person because you had a fantastic support system, well you're still genuinely a great person. If you are a D student with a felony criminal record because everyone around you was a horrible influence and your parents abused you, you're still genuinely terrible. I've seen parents in a store together where one just "supervises" their toddler watching youtube or something while the other shops. Meanwhile I'm there reading to my kids while my wife shops. I'll not be surprised if my kids have better outcomes in large part due to the family they were born into, because I do that on purpose. Society should incentivize people to devote ourselves to raising the best next generation we can. Trying to define merit via some counterfactual hypothetical person instead of the actual person in front of you makes no sense. In fact it's counterproductive as you end up incentivizing people to do things like send their kids to worse schools so they can appear relatively better.
onetimeusename 2mo ago
Yes but there's some nuance. I don't think Harvard admission is necessary for Affirmative Action goals. We're talking about a tiny minority of people who attend. In my own opinion, we're looking at rival elite groups fighting with each other. The SFFA lawsuit targeted Harvard specifically and made the claim not that Affirmative Action was a problem but that secretive racial policies to help whites at the expense of Asians were. There wasn't any direct evidence of it and it's kind of laughable to think Harvard would do that. The SC didn't evaluate that claim and just struck down using race for admissions. But that doesn't mean you can't ask people to write a diversity essay about their race and grade them on that. Harvard's present demographics[1]: Of students in the class who self-identified their race, 11.5 percent identified as African American or Black, 41 percent identified as Asian American, 11 percent identified as Hispanic or Latino, and nearly 2 percent identified as Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander. I don't know why they collate it like this. This doesn't include international students who aren't identified by ethnicity. So based on percentage of the demographic, it would appear this is saying whites underperform on admissions substantially compared to everyone else which seems unlikely to me. [1]: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/10/class-of-2029-yield-tops-83-with-international-students-at-90/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/10/class-of-2029...
cycomanic 2mo ago
You conveniently left out the fact that all the "easy" tracks (athletics, legacy, donor) are heavily skewed toward white applicants. It's interesting how everyone is riling about affirmative action, while at the same time nobody bats an eyelid about those nepotism tracks. And those definitely seem to be institutionally biased against black and Hispanics (in particular the Athletic track it seems, considering the proportion of black athletes in professional sport).

by az226 2mo ago

robrenaud 2mo ago

Do consider the incentives of those developing the model that made those predictions. Afaict, it was not selected for purpose other than testimony.

orsorna 2mo ago

If you treat prestige acceptance rates as a derivative of the progression of racial policy, it absolutely makes sense why affirmative action is in place given the history of racial justice in America. Can you really claim that the trend won't reverse if purely meritocratic admissions are reinstated (disregarding legacy admits...although very unfair to disregard since their racial makeup heavily tracks with asian/white/etc) It's simply a single lever to change the racial makeup of the upper class. And certainly it goes both ways, but to simply remove it with no solution implies a regression to the former system, which was all but equal, much less equitable.

sobellian 2mo ago
Why are we treating it as a derivative, and what's the slope? Do we have proof it's not zero? Let's say Johnny and Kareem both study poli-sci at Harvard. When Johnny graduates with his gentlemanly C's, his dad puts in a word with his golf buddy and it's off to Wall Street. Kareem shoots his resume off through online portals but no one bites. He goes to law school and takes on even more debt. Johnny's sister, Sally, passes the bar on her third try and is hired by a white-shoe law firm. Et cetera.

dahart 2mo ago

> This is institutionalized racism. Perhaps Affirmative Action was needed in the past Affirmative Action is institutionalized discrimination, at least when used to promote some groups over others. (Though it didn’t start that way; it started as a call to be purely race-blind in hiring.) I wouldn’t call it racism though, because it’s not based on any belief that races have different capability, it is purely intended to correct systemic bias based on the belief that races are equally capable. > it was past due to get rid of it This might be true, but there are still achievement and pay gaps in the US. There are lots of debates about why, and I don’t want to start one. I’m just curious how else to solve systemic biases if they’re still here. The whole problem with cultural bias is it’s sticky and difficult and people don’t believe they have biases. Today’s politics has done a lot to convince me that we haven’t solved it yet, but at the same time I’ll be the first to point out that we’ve come a long way even in my lifetime. The last little bit might take longer to fix than suffrage did just because of how subtle the issues are. If we take any preferential treatment off the table, preferential treatment that tries to artificially force equal opportunity, the question is what’s the alternative? We might have momentum, and do nothing might work, but what if it doesn’t? Wouldn’t that also be a form of institutionalized discrimination, effectively, like it was before Affirmative Action existed?

rayiner 2mo ago
Lots of problems in society that are hard to fix. But there's nowhere else in society where our solution to a problem is to subject people who had nothing to do with the problem to unfair treatment. "Two wrongs don't make a right" is a good general principle.
- dahart 2mo ago
  If only it were actually that simple and fixed with platitudes. Culture and belief is passed on from generation to generation, otherwise we wouldn’t have had the persistent problem in the first place. How do we fix a problem that we already have historical evidence that when left alone doesn’t go away on its own, that people who weren’t the original cause of the problem still, in fact, perpetuated it? How can we know people have nothing to do with the problem today, given that there are still discrepancies in outcome? I’m not defending Affirmative Action, the question at hand is what’s the alternative proposal?

digitaltrees 2mo ago

You didn't think the 50% admit rate for athletes, 40% admit rate for deans interest ie large cash donors, and 35% legacy admit rate were "the whole think"?

Yizahi 2mo ago
Honestly, the combination of extremely discriminatory, extremely corrupt, extremely predatory and then again discriminated differently by the fact if they are a sportsball player or not is rather amusing and at the same time baffling when observed from the other side of the globe. Of course it is too late by now, by have Americans considered maybe abolishing all that and admitting students only based on the exam results, with preference given to the kids with better results (or no preference)? And replacing professional sportsball with a 1 lesson/week of general fitness? Maybe then they won't need to get so much debt to study too.
- aliasxneo 2mo ago
  > have Americans considered maybe abolishing all that and admitting students only based on the exam results No, because that's "not fair" to some groups.
  - digitaltrees 2mo ago
    If we are talking about a meritocracy and access to opportuity this doesn't even have to be about fairness the reality is if there are talented people that dont do as well on tests simply because they cant afford private tutors and prep courses maybe it makes sense to factor that in. But there is also a legitimate reason to pursue fairness. When a society loses upward mobility and becomes a calcified caste social unrest becomes an existential threat. When we ignore that disparity compounds and locks people out of the social system we risk destroying the very system that we benefit from.
- purpleflame1257 2mo ago
  For the last 50 years you would get in severe trouble for using test scores alone thanks to disparate impact.

alistairSH 2mo ago

What data do you have to support the assertion that affirmative action is no longer necessary to ensure proper representation of minorities on campus? I'm open to arguments that there are better ways to achieve the goal of equitable access to higher eduction, but looking at enrollment numbers, the problem is far from solved.

blagie 2mo ago
The open question is the meaning of "proper representation:" - One which maximizes Harvard's power network? - Most likely to succeed in the future? - Representative of the general public by race? - Representative of the general public in other ways (e.g. religion, political affiliation)? - Academically, best-qualified right now? - Academically, most potential? At birth? Now? - Most likely to donate? Etc. However defined, Harvard has much modest discrimination by race compared to discrimination by religion, political affiliation, or home town. Harvard is 95% liberal, and much more so at the faculty level. If you look at the further-out evangelical, born-again Christian groups, or more conservative Muslim groups, the discrimination is even more extreme. Atheists are vastly over-represented, in contrast. Until one is aligned on goals and definitions, one can't speak of goals being met or unmet. Harvard can be -- and indeed, is -- racist against blacks by one definition, against whites by another, against Asians by a third, and so on.
- alistairSH 2mo ago
  Fair questions and criticisms. I would prefer to have colleges [elite or otherwise] be generally representative of the population by race, religion, socio-economic background, etc. The problem, as I understand it, is "best qualified" is massively impacted by things like race, parental income, and other factors outside the control of college applicants. Society is far from a meritocracy.
  - ndriscoll 2mo ago
    In what way is that not meritocratic? The goal isn't to find the most Christlike figure born to the humblest beginnings and tempted thoughout his life by literally Satan to fall off the good path; it's to find the actually realized best qualified person. If you're the smartest, most knowledgeable, most conscientious, most humble person because you had a fantastic support system, well you're still genuinely a great person. If you are a D student with a felony criminal record because everyone around you was a horrible influence and your parents abused you, you're still genuinely terrible. I've seen parents in a store together where one just "supervises" their toddler watching youtube or something while the other shops. Meanwhile I'm there reading to my kids while my wife shops. I'll not be surprised if my kids have better outcomes in large part due to the family they were born into, because I do that on purpose. Society should incentivize people to devote ourselves to raising the best next generation we can. Trying to define merit via some counterfactual hypothetical person instead of the actual person in front of you makes no sense. In fact it's counterproductive as you end up incentivizing people to do things like send their kids to worse schools so they can appear relatively better.

onetimeusename 2mo ago

Yes but there's some nuance. I don't think Harvard admission is necessary for Affirmative Action goals. We're talking about a tiny minority of people who attend. In my own opinion, we're looking at rival elite groups fighting with each other. The SFFA lawsuit targeted Harvard specifically and made the claim not that Affirmative Action was a problem but that secretive racial policies to help whites at the expense of Asians were. There wasn't any direct evidence of it and it's kind of laughable to think Harvard would do that. The SC didn't evaluate that claim and just struck down using race for admissions. But that doesn't mean you can't ask people to write a diversity essay about their race and grade them on that. Harvard's present demographics[1]: Of students in the class who self-identified their race, 11.5 percent identified as African American or Black, 41 percent identified as Asian American, 11 percent identified as Hispanic or Latino, and nearly 2 percent identified as Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander. I don't know why they collate it like this. This doesn't include international students who aren't identified by ethnicity. So based on percentage of the demographic, it would appear this is saying whites underperform on admissions substantially compared to everyone else which seems unlikely to me. [1]: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/10/class-of-2029-yield-tops-83-with-international-students-at-90/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/10/class-of-2029...

cycomanic 2mo ago

You conveniently left out the fact that all the "easy" tracks (athletics, legacy, donor) are heavily skewed toward white applicants. It's interesting how everyone is riling about affirmative action, while at the same time nobody bats an eyelid about those nepotism tracks. And those definitely seem to be institutionally biased against black and Hispanics (in particular the Athletic track it seems, considering the proportion of black athletes in professional sport).