Affirmative Action (split from Are people already regretting their choice?)

[Derec]

Why did so many black and Latino men vote for trump?

Some of it may be that they are sexists who would not vote for a woman. But it could also be that they were turned off by an administration, and by a party, that is seen as hostile toward men. The Obama era "Dear Colleague" debacle from 2011 is an example (and Biden played a big role in that sexist policy), as is not even considering men for important appointments like running mate, SCOTUS justice, or Senator from California.

You don’t have to love a candidate or a party to figure out that one candidate is much worse than the other one.

I agree. Trump is much worse, but Dems lost the election because they were too beholden to the activists. Relevant to this thread - activists on race matters. Biden administration was totally supportive of "affirmative action" policies even as it was clear that it is an issue so unpopular among the electorate that it even failed in a California referendum in 2020.

I have never really loved any candidate I ever supported, with the exception of Stacy Abrams, who almost beat Kemp the first time she ran for governor. Stacy had the support of all kinds of people.

She did come close in 2018, but she screwed up when she became a sore loser and claimed that the election was stolen.
I also think she should have ran for Senate in 2020 instead of the preacher man. Instead, she ran again for governor in 2022 and came nowhere near her 2018 near miss.
Now she is pretty much nowhere. She has no position from which to stage a political comeback in 2026 or 2028.

 

[Gospel]

I think you’re putting a little too much weight on the “sexism/activist” angle here. Sure, some voters probably don’t like the idea of a woman in power, but that doesn’t explain the whole shift among Black and Latino men. A lot of men I talk to are way more focused on bread-and-butter stuff, like cost of living, jobs, crime, small business regulations, and they felt like Dems weren’t on that front.

The “Dear Colleague” letter and affirmative action debates might matter to a niche of voters, but most people don’t wake up in the morning thinking about Title IX policy. If you look at Prop 16 in California, yeah it failed, but it didn’t suddenly convert millions of Latinos into Republicans. It just showed that the Dem brand doesn’t always line up neatly with what working-class voters want. And on Abrams, she definitely hurt herself after 2018, no argument there. But her situation is more about Georgia politics than it is a blueprint for why national Black/Latino men lean one way or the other. At the end of the day, Trump’s style (machismo, anti-establishment, “fighter” persona) clicked with some of these voters in a way Biden never could. That’s a big part of the story too, not just identity politics.

 

[Gospel]

[*]Pretends AA = only Black people.

Never said that.

[*]Pretends Biden’s picks were “unqualified” because they weren’t white.

Never said that either. But Biden practiced racial discrimination with his choice of judges.

[*]Pretends culture war panic is the “voice of the people,” instead of a manufactured outrage.

A lot of the "culture war" bullshit only appealed to the activist classes and it went against what most people wanted.
Specifically regarding AA, racial preferences are unpopular, but race activists want even more of it, even going as far as demanding "reparations".

Every time AA or DEI comes up, you laser-focus on Black people, as if they’re the only ones who benefit, or the only ones who ever got considered.

Because that is the most visible part of the issue. While Hispanics have surpassed blacks in sheer numbers, most pro-AA activism is still black.

That tells your story. Biden’s appointees weren’t ‘unqualified,’ they just weren’t white.

And why do you think that it's ok to discriminate against well-qualified white judges?
Why should a president like Biden give preference to non-white and female judges instead of treating people as individuals?

That’s what actually bothers people.

Appointing non-white judges is not what bothers me (or most people). It's giving preference to non-white judges that bothers me.

Also Trump didn’t win 2024 ‘bigly’ because of Affirmative Action. He won because culture war panic has become the entire Republican platform.

The Democratic 2024 defeat was a death by 1000 cuts. Biden administration (and the Democratic Party as a whole) placing itself at odds with most Americans on many issues, including so-called "affirmative action" certainly played its role.

You know what, you’re mostly right on these arguments, enough that I’ll concede without dragging it out.

 

[bilby]

You know what, you’re mostly right on these arguments, enough that I’ll concede without dragging it out.

Are you absolutely certain that you have fully understood the purpose of an Internet discussion board, and the expectations placed on contributors to such boards?

 

[Gospel]

You’re speak on Affirmative Action like it’s just a “Black vs. white” policy, but that’s never been true. White women have consistently been its biggest beneficiaries.

Sex-based preference are of course wrong too.

It also covers Latinos,

I did mention "people whose ancestors spoke Spanish" explicitly. You are right. There are groups other than black/white at issue here.

Asians,

Asians tend to be discriminated against even more than whites by so-called "affirmative action". Remember how Harvard assigned Asian applicants low "personality scores" to limit how many they admit?
And Asians need an even higher GPA and MCAT to get admitted to medical schools than whites, and whites need a much higher grades/score combo to get admitted compared to blacks and Hispanics.

Indigenous students,

Yes, Indians (aka "Siberian-Americans") are also heavily advantaged by racial preferences.
Just look at this table:
View attachment 51824

veterans, and even people from under-resourced schools. So when you say, “don’t just give preference based on skin color,” that’s not what’s happening.

It is not the only thing that's been happening, but giving preference based on race and ethnolinguistic group has certainly been happening, and is still happening to some extent.

It’s about addressing structural barriers that impact multiple groups, not handing out favors because of what someone “looks like.”

Wrong. AA is all about what somebody looks like.
Structural barriers exist across racial categories. A white kid from rural Georgia has fewer opportunities than a scion of a professional black family from Atlanta. But guess who gets a bump under "affirmative action" policies.

The race metaphor works because wealth, education, and opportunity are generationally inherited, not individually reset at age 18.

I do not think it works, for several reasons. For one, you completely ignore individuals, collapsing everybody, across generations, into "runners" based on "race", which is an amorphous concept at best.
Second, things like wealth are not inherited based on race, but generally based on family. A poor white family from Appalachia does not benefit from Elon Musk being wealthy. Education is not inherited per se - individuals have to get educated themselves. What is inherited is things like attitude and habits taught from a young age, as well as genetic factors. But again, those are passed in families, not based on race.

You’re right that Asians face unique barriers in admissions, no argument there. But the leap you’re making is that AA is just about skin color, when in reality it was created to address the structural disadvantages baked into how wealth, schools, and opportunities were distributed for generations. A poor white kid in Appalachia is at a disadvantage, no doubt, but historically they were never barred from neighborhoods, schools, or jobs because of race. That cumulative exclusion is what AA is aimed at. Pretending it’s just about “what somebody looks like” flattens the entire context and makes it sound like history didn’t happen. Look, you can hate AA (I know I do) and still be honest about outcomes. When California banned it, elite campuses lost huge chunks of their Black and Latino students basically overnight. If you think the answer is to end AA, fine, but then what’s the plan? Without something else in place, you don’t get ‘colorblind meritocracy,’ you just get universities and professions that look like it’s 1950 again.

• Elite university enrollment collapses: When California banned AA (Prop 209, 1996), the very next year Black and Latino enrollment at UCLA and UC Berkeley dropped by about 40%. That looked like the student demographics from the 1950s, when segregation and structural barriers kept those groups out.
• Professional representation shrinks: Law schools, medical schools, and business schools immediately saw fewer Black and Latino applicants admitted after AA bans. These professions then looked far whiter than the country’s actual demographics, I specifically mean like before civil rights reforms opened doors.
• Leadership pipelines dry up: Because elite schools feed into law firms, hospitals, politics, and corporate boardrooms, banning AA means fewer minorities in those spaces. The result? Leadership demographics that resemble mid-20th century America.
• Segregation re-entrenches: Wealthy, suburban, mostly white kids dominate admissions because they’ve had access to better schools, test prep, and legacy advantages. Without AA balancing that inequity, campuses and careers “re-segregate” along those old lines.

When I say “like the 1950s,” I don’t mean literally Jim Crow laws, I mean the outcomes end up echoing that era: overwhelmingly white, underrepresentation of minorities, and closed-off opportunity pipelines. If whole demographics feel “locked out” again, you may see stronger pushes for structural reforms, either new civil rights-style movements, or more radical political alignments. Which btw I welcome because AA got in the way of what should have been done in the first place. Which is nuke racism, not make it free speech.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There are plenty of chains on the brains of white people who refuse to acknowledge that racism still exists and that it still is an enormous factor in the daily lives of non-white people. Chains, blinders: whatever it is that causes people to refuse to take good, hard honest looks at themselves in the mirror.

You keep saying there's hidden racism, but why is it so elusive to locate apart from class?

My father was extremely opposed to AA because in his mind, it gave ‘advantages’ to black people while ignoring the difficulties of being born poor and white. He had a point in that the difficulties facing people on the lower economic end of the scale are to an extent universal. What he could not see is that while he became moderately successful himself, despite his impoverished background, he did it with a white skin—and the assumption that he achieved what he did because he was smart and hard working.

And what is your evidence that it was a white skin that helped him?

Being born poor hurts everyone regardless of skin color. Being born into a culture of being poor hurts far more, again apart from skin color.

 

[Toni]

I think you’re putting a little too much weight on the “sexism/activist” angle here. Sure, some voters probably don’t like the idea of a woman in power, but that doesn’t explain the whole shift among Black and Latino men. A lot of men I talk to are way more focused on bread-and-butter stuff, like cost of living, jobs, crime, small business regulations, and they felt like Dems weren’t on that front.

The “Dear Colleague” letter and affirmative action debates might matter to a niche of voters, but most people don’t wake up in the morning thinking about Title IX policy. If you look at Prop 16 in California, yeah it failed, but it didn’t suddenly convert millions of Latinos into Republicans. It just showed that the Dem brand doesn’t always line up neatly with what working-class voters want. And on Abrams, she definitely hurt herself after 2018, no argument there. But her situation is more about Georgia politics than it is a blueprint for why national Black/Latino men lean one way or the other. At the end of the day, Trump’s style (machismo, anti-establishment, “fighter” persona) clicked with some of these voters in a way Biden never could. That’s a big part of the story too, not just identity politics.

My opinion is that many Latinos and also immigrants from other parts of the world tend to be more socially conservative. That makes a difference to a some people. Couple that with the allure of a party that promises fewer regulations and impediments to starting or running a business? I get the appeal if you were raised devoutly Catholic or otherwise opposed to abortion and gay rights and have a more traditional view of marriage.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Loren, you keep reducing AA to ‘skin color genetics,’ but that’s just your loop. The actual data shows its biggest beneficiaries have been white women, along with Latinos, Asians, Indigenous students, veterans, and low-income applicants. In other words, it’s always been about multiple groups, not just the caricature you’re pushing. I’ve had this exact exchange with you too many times, I’m not here to spin in circles while you ignore the evidence and peddle white supremacists rhetoric that IIDB clearly takes little issue with.

And you keep not recognizing that the results show it's not just racism.

 

[Toni]

There are plenty of chains on the brains of white people who refuse to acknowledge that racism still exists and that it still is an enormous factor in the daily lives of non-white people. Chains, blinders: whatever it is that causes people to refuse to take good, hard honest looks at themselves in the mirror.

You keep saying there's hidden racism, but why is it so elusive to locate apart from class?

My father was extremely opposed to AA because in his mind, it gave ‘advantages’ to black people while ignoring the difficulties of being born poor and white. He had a point in that the difficulties facing people on the lower economic end of the scale are to an extent universal. What he could not see is that while he became moderately successful himself, despite his impoverished background, he did it with a white skin—and the assumption that he achieved what he did because he was smart and hard working.

And what is your evidence that it was a white skin that helped him?

Being born poor hurts everyone regardless of skin color. Being born into a culture of being poor hurts far more, again apart from skin color.

Being born poor and white? You can go to school, get a decent job and put on a suit and nobody knows you didn’t have indoor plumbing when you grew up.

Born to a nice black family with both parents educated, professional degrees? You can’t drive in a lot of places without being pulled over or worse

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It doesn't cover Asians. Works against Asians. I'll get in trouble for saying this, but I do think that everyone should be treated equal. Because we all come from different backgrounds and experiences. For example, like many families, our family is mixed. I'm native. My wife's side of the family is white. My side are mostly doing pretty well. Wife's side is not. The government should benefit my side and not theirs. Then our kids are Asian. So I should get benefits but not my daughters or brother-in-law?

And look at the world--you figure you'll get in trouble for expressing a desire for equality. And people wonder why we complain about AA??

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Asians tend to be discriminated against even more than whites by so-called "affirmative action". Remember how Harvard assigned Asian applicants low "personality scores" to limit how many they admit?
And Asians need an even higher GPA and MCAT to get admitted to medical schools than whites, and whites need a much higher grades/score combo to get admitted compared to blacks and Hispanics.

Exactly. How in the world are they even measuring a "personality score"?? When it was stupid metrics to keep out women and blacks people understood what they were, but for some reason the stupid metrics are not recognized for what they are in the modern reverse discrimination.

Wrong. AA is all about what somebody looks like.
Structural barriers exist across racial categories. A white kid from rural Georgia has fewer opportunities than a scion of a professional black family from Atlanta. But guess who gets a bump under "affirmative action" policies.

Which is exactly my problem with it. That scion would have made it anyway, AA or no. The guy from the inner city would not have made it even with AA. There are no legitimate beneficiaries remaining, all of them have already been helped.

The race metaphor works because wealth, education, and opportunity are generationally inherited, not individually reset at age 18.

I do not think it works, for several reasons. For one, you completely ignore individuals, collapsing everybody, across generations, into "runners" based on "race", which is an amorphous concept at best.

I don't mind the chains/race concept, the problem comes from treating the group as monolithic.

Second, things like wealth are not inherited based on race, but generally based on family. A poor white family from Appalachia does not benefit from Elon Musk being wealthy. Education is not inherited per se - individuals have to get educated themselves. What is inherited is things like attitude and habits taught from a young age, as well as genetic factors. But again, those are passed in families, not based on race.

More whites inherit wealth than blacks do. The reason it doesn't matter is that most people do not have a meaningful inheritance before their path in life is set. Middle class generally means fund your own college. Upper middle class likely means you don't need student loans and thus have an easier time of it. But very few get more than this.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A lot of the "culture war" bullshit only appealed to the activist classes and it went against what most people wanted.
Specifically regarding AA, racial preferences are unpopular, but race activists want even more of it, even going as far as demanding "reparations".

It's the same problem every such thing encounters: the reality is that organizations protect themselves before any duty. When a movement obtains it's goals they will always shift it's point of aim such that it's goals are not attained and it has a reason to continue. When there's somebody above them that can declare it done it stops, but things that don't have anybody in a position to dictate that hang on long beyond their time.

Look at what happened with prohibition: a whole bunch of unemployed alcohol cops with the repeal. Go home? No, redirected to hunting drugs, setting the seeds for the drug war.

 

[laughing dog]

Loren, you keep reducing AA to ‘skin color genetics,’ but that’s just your loop. The actual data shows its biggest beneficiaries have been white women, along with Latinos, Asians, Indigenous students, veterans, and low-income applicants. In other words, it’s always been about multiple groups, not just the caricature you’re pushing. I’ve had this exact exchange with you too many times, I’m not here to spin in circles while you ignore the evidence and peddle white supremacists rhetoric that IIDB clearly takes little issue with.

And you keep not recognizing that the results show it's not just racism.

Is that “not just racism” as in “not solely racism” or “not at all racism”?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The “Dear Colleague” letter and affirmative action debates might matter to a niche of voters, but most people don’t wake up in the morning thinking about Title IX policy. If you look at Prop 16 in California, yeah it failed, but it didn’t suddenly convert millions of Latinos into Republicans. It just showed that the Dem brand doesn’t always line up neatly with what working-class voters want. And on Abrams, she definitely hurt herself after 2018, no argument there. But her situation is more about Georgia politics than it is a blueprint for why national Black/Latino men lean one way or the other. At the end of the day, Trump’s style (machismo, anti-establishment, “fighter” persona) clicked with some of these voters in a way Biden never could. That’s a big part of the story too, not just identity politics.

The problem was things like this causing people to not vote. We have seen some on here.

 

[Toni]

It doesn't cover Asians. Works against Asians. I'll get in trouble for saying this, but I do think that everyone should be treated equal. Because we all come from different backgrounds and experiences. For example, like many families, our family is mixed. I'm native. My wife's side of the family is white. My side are mostly doing pretty well. Wife's side is not. The government should benefit my side and not theirs. Then our kids are Asian. So I should get benefits but not my daughters or brother-in-law?

And look at the world--you figure you'll get in trouble for expressing a desire for equality. And people wonder why we complain about AA??

No, I understand exactly why you complain about affirmative Action.

The truth is that AA is supposed to help level the playing field for persons most affected by systemic discrimination by ensuring access to education and employment opportunities.

In the US, that mostly is black people, NA, Latinx and women who have historically been denied access to educational and employment opportunities.

The success of individuals in those groups does not mean that there is not still discrimination against the groups as a whole or large portions of these groups.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You’re right that Asians face unique barriers in admissions, no argument there. But the leap you’re making is that AA is just about skin color, when in reality it was created to address the structural disadvantages baked into how wealth, schools, and opportunities were distributed for generations. A poor white kid in Appalachia is at a disadvantage, no doubt, but historically they were never barred from neighborhoods, schools, or jobs because of race. That cumulative exclusion is what AA is aimed at. Pretending it’s just about “what somebody looks like” flattens the entire context and makes it sound like history didn’t happen. Look, you can hate AA (I know I do) and still be honest about outcomes. When California banned it, elite campuses lost huge chunks of their Black and Latino students basically overnight. If you think the answer is to end AA, fine, but then what’s the plan? Without something else in place, you don’t get ‘colorblind meritocracy,’ you just get universities and professions that look like it’s 1950 again.

What it was created to do and what it actually does are different things. The intent was good. It worked. Job done. It's just that it hung on, bearing the costs (and amplifying them because the discrimination warriors need wins to justify their jobs) but with nothing useful to do anymore.

• Elite university enrollment collapses: When California banned AA (Prop 209, 1996), the very next year Black and Latino enrollment at UCLA and UC Berkeley dropped by about 40%. That looked like the student demographics from the 1950s, when segregation and structural barriers kept those groups out.
• Professional representation shrinks: Law schools, medical schools, and business schools immediately saw fewer Black and Latino applicants admitted after AA bans. These professions then looked far whiter than the country’s actual demographics, I specifically mean like before civil rights reforms opened doors.
• Leadership pipelines dry up: Because elite schools feed into law firms, hospitals, politics, and corporate boardrooms, banning AA means fewer minorities in those spaces. The result? Leadership demographics that resemble mid-20th century America.
• Segregation re-entrenches: Wealthy, suburban, mostly white kids dominate admissions because they’ve had access to better schools, test prep, and legacy advantages. Without AA balancing that inequity, campuses and careers “re-segregate” along those old lines.

You recognized that it's about class--but then turn right around and make it about race. What you are seeing is removing the unfair boost that middle class blacks were getting. Note that there was a drop in admissions to elite universities, not a drop in those going to college. And there was an increase in those who actually got degrees. People were getting into better colleges than they should have and failing. Put them in the right schools and they succeed.

When I say “like the 1950s,” I don’t mean literally Jim Crow laws, I mean the outcomes end up echoing that era: overwhelmingly white, underrepresentation of minorities, and closed-off opportunity pipelines. If whole demographics feel “locked out” again, you may see stronger pushes for structural reforms, either new civil rights-style movements, or more radical political alignments. Which btw I welcome because AA got in the way of what should have been done in the first place. Which is nuke racism, not make it free speech.

What's closing the pipeline is coming from an inner city background.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And what is your evidence that it was a white skin that helped him?

Being born poor hurts everyone regardless of skin color. Being born into a culture of being poor hurts far more, again apart from skin color.

Being born poor and white? You can go to school, get a decent job and put on a suit and nobody knows you didn’t have indoor plumbing when you grew up.

Born to a nice black family with both parents educated, professional degrees? You can’t drive in a lot of places without being pulled over or worse

You're still assuming your conclusion.

 

[Toni]

And what is your evidence that it was a white skin that helped him?

Being born poor hurts everyone regardless of skin color. Being born into a culture of being poor hurts far more, again apart from skin color.

Being born poor and white? You can go to school, get a decent job and put on a suit and nobody knows you didn’t have indoor plumbing when you grew up.

Born to a nice black family with both parents educated, professional degrees? You can’t drive in a lot of places without being pulled over or worse

You're still assuming your conclusion.

I think that glint of light that is making you squint so hard is the sunlight bouncing off of your mirror.

 

[Jarhyn]

You keep saying there's hidden racism, but why is it so elusive to locate apart from class?

Have you ever had anything about you that is open or even remotely obvious, and which you can tell clearly is culturally offensive to those around you, and for no good reason?

How is it expressed?

How often has anyone outright told you they didn't like you, vs the times they expressed it in every way but outright telling you?

Because it happens to me all the goddamn time.

It is elusive because racists operate largely with plausible deniability.

My own mother, for all I love her for raising me, is like that, and her behavior and mannerisms, and those of the small town I grew up in, all that over time soaked into me, and now I am myself kind of racist. I can pretty clearly spot when that impulse is active and sort it to "the devil's shoulder", as it were.

Even so, t's still there and while I can clearly identify it and classify it and do my best to put it's contribution to who I am into a useful context (however anxious that may make me at times) it will never go away and I have to deal with that. I cannot be the only one that has happened to, for all I expect some people may have a very different relationship with the effects and thoughts encouraged by all that momentum.

We have users on these forums who are completely and utterly blind to their own very clear prejudices, and for all I know I'm yet another one of them, however hard I try to not be.

The racism happens in those moments, and the ones between them, the moments when someone phrases something "we aren't allowed to call them that anymore" rather than discussing it first in context of how utterly disrespectful some words are, for example.

I didn't even know there were slurs for Arabic people until I was in the army being told those specific slurs in that first context.

Do you want me to tell you at what age, and from someone of what tender age was yelling antisemitic slurs loud enough to overheard them?

I went to highschool with who were, in retrospect, actual Nazis!

It's just that eventually some other Nazi pulls them aside and tells them sagely to quit saying the quiet parts out loud outside of guarded locations.

The evidence of hidden racism is in the evidence of overt racism still existing, and in the ability of humans to hide who they are from others.

 

[Derec]

Not sure how many here forgot, but I’m actually against AA.

Glad to read, but why do you then spend so much time defending it?

To me, it was nothing more than appeasement for those who built their lives on discrimination.

What's worse, it's trying to fight the effects of discrimination with more discrimination. And there was no mechanism for it to go away automatically once the original discrimination lessened. Instead, it lasted so long that many members of the beneficiary groups see it as their birthright. That leads to complacency; why work hard to do well on the MCAT when you are being judged on a different scale than white and Asian applicants? It also leads to anger when this advantage is threatened.

Instead of criminalizing racism for the massive harm it caused, the system watered it down into a civil matter and even sheltered it under the Constitution as ‘speech’ in many cases.

I do not see how it practically or constitutionally could be criminalized. Also, would your solution criminalize the Nation of Islam? Or the speech by the likes of New Yorker writer Doreen St. Felix? Or would it be, like so much race discourse today, entirely one-sided?