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As I mention below in “Upcoming Affirmative Action Ploys,” there’s a growing push to come up with supposedly race-neutral ways to put a thumb on the hiring and college admissions scale to deviously craft ways to produce the same number of black and Hispanic beneficiaries.
Commenter Anthony adds:
The other piece of this that tends to go unmentioned is that, yes, you can design a scheme that preserves existing racial diversity while improving economic diversity – but only if you significantly increase the proportion of kids who are getting admitted due to those demographic preferences as opposed to academic merit or whatever else is currently getting used. Racial preferences are large in size but relatively small in terms of the number of kids they actually affect. Use income, geography, or anything else and, because most of the kids who you capture with that are white or Asian, you have to take way more kids through that process to get the same number of black and Hispanic kids as you’re currently accepting with direct racial preferences. (And then, as pointed out, they aren’t even the black and Hispanic kids who are most likely to succeed.)
Right, these contrived methods would produce the same percentage of each race, but a worse selection of individuals from each race. It’s like how the Chicago Fire Department made their hiring test so easy that 96% of white applicants score high enough to get into the lottery round.
In contrast, using rigorous selection methods and then imposing hard quotas so that you pick from the top down for each race produces better performing members of each race on average than hamstringing the selection processes in the name of colorblind methods of diversity. After all, colorblindness is a form of blindness.
Perhaps we should agree to simple quotas for blacks and American Indians, but limit the number of people who qualify to only those individuals who can prove, using both genealogical records and DNA analysis, that at least 25% of their ancestors were blacks or American Indians who were living on United States territory in 1860? E.g., Michelle gets affirmative action, but not Barack.
“Perhaps we should agree to simple quotas for blacks and American Indians, but limit the number of people who qualify to only those individuals who can prove, using both genealogical records and DNA analysis, that at least 25% of their ancestors were blacks or American Indians who were living on United States territory in 1860? E.g., Michelle gets affirmative action, but not Barack.”
Steve, you’re forgetting that since Bakke in the late 70s, the official rationale for affirmative action has been diversity, not compensation for the lingering effects of slavery, discrimination or (in the case of Native Americans) dispossession. So it’s irrelevant that, say, Caribbean and African blacks and recent Latino immigrants and their descendants are not descended from anyone who was enslaved or oppressed in the US; if they’re underrepresented, affirmative action for them can be justified as serving the goal of diversity.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/colorblind-alternatives-to-quotas/#comment-585919
Here in NYC the FDNY’s recruitment department is literally called the “Office of Recruitment and Diversity”.
People trapped in buildings were probably complaining about how white the people who saved them were.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/colorblind-alternatives-to-quotas/#comment-585938
In Bakke, UC-Davis Medical School set aside some admission slots for black doctors because (they explained) black doctors would provide services to black communities, which, the school felt, was underserved.
Justice Powell said that there had been no legislative finding of medical discrimination, and therefore no past discrimination that UC-Davis should redress. He said that institutions like UC-Davis were not the appropriate deciders of the need for racial discrimination, and therefore if UC-Davis discriminated they could only do so for their traditional interests, such as providing a good education.
The Harvard Plan, which Powell approved of, used race (as one factor among many) to get a diversity of viewpoints and perspectives in the classrooms and therefore provide a better education for the students. As long as UC-Davis followed the Harvard Plan it was in the clear, but it could not take it upon itself to redress social injustices in the absence of an official governmental finding.
At least UC-Davis was honest. Powell’s one-factor-among-many-for-diverse-classroom-discussion has been twisted out of shape.
There is nothing, however, in Powells’ reasoning that would ipso facto prevent any state from creating quotas such as Steve proposes — after an appropriate state commission did the research and determined that direct quotas were a narrowly tailored means of redressing past injustices.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/colorblind-alternatives-to-quotas/#comment-585943
“Colorblindness is a form of blindness”??? What form is that?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/colorblind-alternatives-to-quotas/#comment-585951
if they’re underrepresented, affirmative action for them can be justified as serving the goal of diversity.
Yes, it’s all about diversity and inclusion, so that recent immigrants are not left out.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/colorblind-alternatives-to-quotas/#comment-585952
They just never give up, do they? One of these days people will just have to let the chips fall where they may and deal with the fallout. If some groups want to picket, riot, flash mob or scream through megaphones on street corners then so be it. Things will come to a head at some point anyway so there’s no time like the present to start girding up.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/colorblind-alternatives-to-quotas/#comment-585954
In the case of the Ivy League, where you are essentially selecting tomorrow’s ruling elite, I would favor affirmative action for every racial group and geographical region (including rural vs. urban). Sure, a lot of the smartest would be left out, but that is not the point. The point is that there are plenty who are smart enough and what you want is a nationals elite that reflects the ethnic and geographical diversity of the American people.
But when it comes to the hard sciences and engineering, including medicine (but not law), there you should go with a straight meritocracy. It doesn’t matter that certain groups would be over- or under- represented
http://www.unz.com/isteve/colorblind-alternatives-to-quotas/#comment-585968
[…] Source: Steve Sailer […]
http://www.unz.com/isteve/colorblind-alternatives-to-quotas/#comment-585987
I’m very sure of very few things, but the near-term continuation of affirmative action policies at our public institutions is up there with certainty of the next sunrise. Everyone knows — but cannot admit — that AA is necessary to engineer the racial/ethnic make-up of university students. It’s an accepted constant in our era’s equation. Not gonna change anytime soon.
You and Razib publish here; Al Sharpton has a nightly platform on MSNBC. Talk about injustices in our system, lol
http://www.unz.com/isteve/colorblind-alternatives-to-quotas/#comment-585990
Move to a red state and join the red state secession movement. That’s our only hope to be released from the multi-culti nightmare.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/colorblind-alternatives-to-quotas/#comment-585998
“Perhaps we should agree to simple quotas for blacks and American Indians…”
You (America) should ban Affirmative Action, race based quotas, and the race-based targets of ‘disparate impact’. Those who want to will still find sneaky ways to discriminate, but it would be a much better situation.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/colorblind-alternatives-to-quotas/#comment-586051
Luke Lea:
“In the case of the Ivy League, where you are essentially selecting tomorrow’s ruling elite…”
It doesn’t really work like that. Harvard is around 20%+ Jewish and 20%+ east-Asian, but that doesn’t mean tomorrow’s ruling elite will be 20%+ Jewish and 20%+ east-Asian. It is and will be considerably more than 20% Jewish, and considerably less than 20% east-Asian.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/colorblind-alternatives-to-quotas/#comment-586054
At least you could argue that Jim Crow, unfair as it was, worked like a bulwark against barbarism (as time has proved). But Affirmative Action is just discrimination of the worst kind, and naked political clientelism. It will ultimately destroy society and the economy.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/colorblind-alternatives-to-quotas/#comment-586069
I don’t understand all the speculation. IIRC the GSA and the University of California switched from minority to a preference for “economically disadvantaged” years ago. How did that work out?
http://www.unz.com/isteve/colorblind-alternatives-to-quotas/#comment-586152
The problem is that any measure of merit used to determine entry will necessarily have some racial disparate impact.
Since merit is the problem, screw merit.
Instead of testing, etc., just pick random persons for the job from a SS number lottery and draft them for public service jobs. “These next 50 persons report to the Fire Department for training: …”
Or take the applicants and put all of them in a blind lottery, regardless of test scores – heck, we won’t even bother TESTING them!
http://www.unz.com/isteve/colorblind-alternatives-to-quotas/#comment-586154
I don’t give a hoot who ends up in the Ivy League, I care who ends up in the NYC Fire Dept., because bad personnel decisions can affect my life.
I just saw a woman fire fighter the other day. This is the first time I have ever seen one of these legendary creatures. I fear this is the beginning of a genuine downward trend in one of the few places in NYC that has so far kept up standards.
Prediction: death and destruction.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/colorblind-alternatives-to-quotas/#comment-586157
Well, slightly OT but Cookies’ reference to a woman FF reminded me of something I once saw on The First 48 that was both amusing and infuriating. Some southern SWAT team, maybe the Harris County Sheriffs, goes out to collar a murder fugitive at an apartment complex. A couple of heavily armored guys go up the stairs to the door, and 15 or 20 other officers are out in the parking lot pointing rifles and shotguns. Behind these 20 is a little black woman, maybe 5’4″ with a big outta shape booty, pointing a pistol over the crowd, adding that little bit of extra security to the team. I’d be happy if just 50% of this joyous overtime party could be eliminated.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/colorblind-alternatives-to-quotas/#comment-586238