Why Does Affirmative Action need Justification?

[Infinity]

Do any of you guys even read what you write before you post it?  You certainly don't read what anyone else has written.  You guys all talk around each other.  It would be better to try to respond to each other and not just snarl at shadows.

[Deontologist]

The silver lining is that most anti-AA arguments I've heard come from slighted non-URMs (slighty whities?) who are manifestly displeased with their harvest from admissions season. Thus, we can relax knowing that they have been irrevocably burdened with varying degrees of inferiority complex for the balance of their academic and professional lives.

It is a fallacy on this board that only disgruntled, captious white kids have a problem with AA, especially in its current incarnation in America. Indeed, many prominent black intellectuals (as well as some not-so-prominent but independent-minded black Americans) have serious reservations about AA as a tool of distributive justice. If you want to examine some nuanced and legitimate arguments against AA (including from some who actually acknowledge that they were beneficiaries of AA), read John McWhorter, Shelby Steele (brother of Claude), Thomas Sowell, and Stephen Carter. One common theme among their critiques of AA is that it serves to reinforce, rather than undermine, certain racist stereotypes about black Americans. This may explain, in part, the tendency among some "disgruntled white kids" on this board to paint all URMs minorities with the same brush. In effect, the URM has to prove that he or she got in on merit and were held to the same standards because AA implies that the majority of blacks "can't cut it" without the aid of AA.

[anonomous]

I keep seeing over and over the pro-AA people saying something along the lines of "white people who are mad about their own shortcomings."  Is it at all possible to see something that is wrong and be angered by it even if it isn't something that effects them personally?  It's like people don't even read what's written before them.  It's NOT so much that I can't get into certain schools, the problem is that it's not fair that others who have the same numbers CAN.  If everything was on an equal playing field, it would be likely that right around the same numbers would be required to get in.  You would still need in the 170's to get into Yale.  Why is it that liberals always want to critisize the person who takes the opposite viewpoint without addressing the real issue?  STOP IT!

[anonomous]

There ya go again, you don't have an answer so you point the blame elsewhere.  It's not jealousy.  Jealousy would be if they actually were superior.  I'm jealous of those who actually did score a 170.  I'm not jealous of someone who did as well as me or even worse in college and on the LSAT.  I'm mad because I see an injustice, just like I'm mad when someone is fired just because they are black.  Fairness is not seen here. 

Regardless if my points have been answered, people keep saying the same things after I've addressed theirs, so therefore I feel that I have to say it again.

You said, "Don't begrudge your betters their successes. And don't fool yourself with carefully chosen yardsticks like LSAT score. Overall, they're just better applicants, people the school wants to admit. That's why they beat you."


WHAT?  They aren't my better, and they beat me because schools are forced to accept them.  It's obvious that you didn't read one of my earlier posts because I even mentioned that.  It would be one thing if they had the option to be diverse or not, but they don't.  Schools have to fill their quotas, so therefore that point isn't valid.

[anonomous]

So the only way that can get in is if they compete with their peers, not just people in general....

[John Galt]

There ya go again, you don't have an answer so you point the blame elsewhere.  It's not jealousy.  Jealousy would be if they actually were superior.  I'm jealous of those who actually did score a 170.  I'm not jealous of someone who did as well as me or even worse in college and on the LSAT.  I'm mad because I see an injustice, just like I'm mad when someone is fired just because they are black.  Fairness is not seen here. 

Regardless if my points have been answered, people keep saying the same things after I've addressed theirs, so therefore I feel that I have to say it again.

You said, "Don't begrudge your betters their successes. And don't fool yourself with carefully chosen yardsticks like LSAT score. Overall, they're just better applicants, people the school wants to admit. That's why they beat you."


WHAT?  They aren't my better, and they beat me because schools are forced to accept them.  It's obvious that you didn't read one of my earlier posts because I even mentioned that.  It would be one thing if they had the option to be diverse or not, but they don't.  Schools have to fill their quotas, so therefore that point isn't valid.

All your points have been proven false because you're looking at admissions through a lens that only includes numerical values when cleary there are other variables (besides race) that play a significant role.

[Deontologist]

You said, "Overall, they're just better applicants, people the school wants to admit. That's why they beat you."

WHAT?  ... Schools have to fill their quotas, so therefore that point isn't valid.

You seem to have a problem with this. To walk you through this one, replace "the school" with "society" or "government backed by the people" and you will see the point remains.

Your argument would only make sense if relatively unqualified URMs were admitted. As it is, I warrant that those who gain admission to HLS or peer schools are the absolute top performers from their demographic. So again, why begrudge them their admission? They've demolished their entire peer group at every stage of their academic career. You didn't. If you had, you'd be at Harvard, too.

That's what it boils down to. You hide behind absolute standards of human merit, which as anyone will tell you is ridiculous in just about any sense. Context matters.

But, I think what scooby is arguing is that there should be one standard or one common yardstick that is applicable to all candidates. I think people, like myself, who have deep reservations about AA believe that URMs should be judged against all of their peers, not only the peers in their "demographic." This idea that we need to grant URMs a "handicap" in order for them to compete is the height of white liberal smugness. 

[anonomous]

The question shouldn't be how we can get minorities into schools, but rather how we can get them onto an equal playing field.  Letting them into schools just because they have lesser scores and accepting it as how things are isn't helping anything.  Rather, if you could get them to score on average the same as everyone else, then you'd be giving real help.  Stop letting them take the easy way out. 

[anonomous]

If I beat all my peers at Easy Credit University, should I go to Harvard?

[anonomous]

I was responding to the post.  You said beating your peers deserves credit, and I was giving an example.  Do you expect insults to make you somehow correct all of a sudden?