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

[Derec]

-Hyperliberal Florida???

Brain fart. Meant to write hyperliberal California.

They had a referendum to reinstate race preferences (so called "affirmative action") in 2020. It failed by a wide margin (43-57%), even though that year was (due to all the George Floyd nonsense) particularly conducive to that kind of race-based nonsense.

 

[Derec]

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.

I? It is Toni who thinks that it was sexism of voters who would not vote for a woman, and especially a black(ish) woman, that doomed Kamala Harris.
I think that while there certainly are such people, there aren't that many of them. I think the shortcomings of Kamala Harris as a candidate are much more responsible for her loss. As was Biden's decision not to drop out in 2023. As is the Democratic Party brand and how the Biden administration was perceived, much of that self-afflicted. By for example, listening to the activist classes too much.

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.

That is, of course, true as well.

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.

It was part of the tapestry of Democrats centering women in their policies, and also in their messaging.

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.

It shows that "affirmative action" is very unpopular. And yet, Dems have held on to it. Biden claimed that SCOTUS was "not a normal court" when they restricted it in 2023.
Kamala Harris doubled down on race-based policies with her plan for forgivable loans for black people only.
Harris promises 1 million forgivable loans for Black businesses
Talk about being tone-deaf!

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.

I did not say it was.

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.

Trump's persona certainly attracted some, but it also repelled others. It was part of the picture, but not all of it.

 

[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.

I? It is Toni who thinks that it was sexism of voters who would not vote for a woman, and especially a black(ish) woman, that doomed Kamala Harris.
I think that while there certainly are such people, there aren't that many of them. I think the shortcomings of Kamala Harris as a candidate are much more responsible for her loss. As was Biden's decision not to drop out in 2023. As is the Democratic Party brand and how the Biden administration was perceived, much of that self-afflicted. By for example, listening to the activist classes too much.

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.

That is, of course, true as well.

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.

It was part of the tapestry of Democrats centering women in their policies, and also in their messaging.

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.

It shows that "affirmative action" is very unpopular. And yet, Dems have held on to it. Biden claimed that SCOTUS was "not a normal court" when they restricted it in 2023.
Kamala Harris doubled down on race-based policies with her plan for forgivable loans for black people only.
Harris promises 1 million forgivable loans for Black businesses
Talk about being tone-deaf!

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.

I did not say it was.

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.

Trump's persona certainly attracted some, but it also repelled others. It was part of the picture, but not all of it.

I think that comparing the shortcomings of Harris and the shortcomings of Trump, who was her opponent, would have handily earned Harris the presidency if it were not for sexism and racism.

Trump had already had a disastrous first term that tanked the economy and severely worsened the COVID pandemic, particularly considering his looney pronouncements about treatments, dangers, etc. his outrageous behavior exposing hundreds of people to serve his vanity—for starters. For any person who has been alive and awake, Trump’s public utterances should have tanked any political attempts he made, period. But again, he defeated a woman.

Sexism is alive and well in the USA, along with racism. I’m get that white men don’t see it that way. Which is why we need to quit reflexively electing white men.

 

[Toni]

-Hyperliberal Florida???

Brain fart. Meant to write hyperliberal California.

They had a referendum to reinstate race preferences (so called "affirmative action") in 2020. It failed by a wide margin (43-57%), even though that year was (due to all the George Floyd nonsense) particularly conducive to that kind of race-based nonsense.

What a relief!

 

[Toni]

Imagine a 400-meter race. At the starting gun, one runner takes off immediately. The other is held back at the starting line for two full laps, chained in place while the crowd cheers the first runner on. When the starter finally lets the second runner go, he’s exhausted before he even catches sight of his competitor. But now, some spectators in the stands, who didn’t say a word during those first two laps , start shouting: "Stop complaining! Just run faster! The race is fair now!" They act shocked when the late starter points out that being held back for half the race means it was never fair in the first place, and that catching up isn’t as simple as pretending those lost laps never happened.

Yeah, that is a very common metaphor used by proponents of racial preferences.
It only works if you assume that black people collectively, and white people collectively, have an identity, but actual individual people do not.

In reality, the 17 and 18 year olds applying to college today are not the same people who lived 100 years ago, and kinda-sorta look like certain people today.

Are there differences in achievement between races in the US? Yes. But the solution should be to identify core reasons for this, and not just give preference to certain people just because people who have a similar skin color (or whose ancestors spoke Spanish) perform worse on average.

You write that as though there were not and had not always been a system of racial preferences in place.

In fact there have been many studies about what might account for differences in academic achievement between different demographic groups. Guess what? Racism has historically explained a lot and continues to factor in today.

So do things like highest level of educational attainment of parents which is a loose proxy for wealth —and historically for race.

The fact is that it is easier to figure out college—the application process, choosing the best fit, preparing for exams, and in general navigating the issues involved in being successful in college if you have the guidance of people who love and care about you who also went to college.

 

[Toni]

Just to add because not everyone may be aware: there is a HUGE drug crisis in rural America abd it’s become generational with lots of now adults who grew up seeing their parents, especially their dads, dealing with any and all problems by doing drugs. Sometimes it begins innocently enough with someone being addicted to pain meds. But it becomes a general coping mechanism ( here I’m talking mostly about the illegal stuff) and kids grow up thinking this is either normal or just how things are for people like them.

Exactly. The very same forces that are crippling the inner cities. But it can't be because they're white!

That alone accounts for a huge amount of anger rural folks have towards urbanites, politicians and government in general. Its always easier to blame someone who looks different than you do or who grew up somewhere else.

Yup. And rural America has the same problem the inner cities do: those who make something of themselves tend to leave. Any population that has suffered heavy emigration (other than due to flight of a subgroup) ends up in bad shape. It doesn't require all the good ones to leave.

Overly facile analysts at best.

All those people who leave the neighborhood? They end up somewhere.

One of the things one leaves behind when one moves far away is the assumptions that you grew up under.

It takes a lot of hard work and determination to stay where you grew up.

Written by someone who hasn’t lived in her hometown for fifty years.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I think that comparing the shortcomings of Harris and the shortcomings of Trump, who was her opponent, would have handily earned Harris the presidency if it were not for sexism and racism.

Trump had already had a disastrous first term that tanked the economy and severely worsened the COVID pandemic, particularly considering his looney pronouncements about treatments, dangers, etc. his outrageous behavior exposing hundreds of people to serve his vanity—for starters. For any person who has been alive and awake, Trump’s public utterances should have tanked any political attempts he made, period. But again, he defeated a woman.

Sexism is alive and well in the USA, along with racism. I’m get that white men don’t see it that way. Which is why we need to quit reflexively electing white men.

2024 was far more about a massive disinformation campaign than the actual positions.

 

[ZiprHead]

States Have Added Nearly 100 Restrictive Laws Since SCOTUS Gutted the Voting Rights Act 10 Years Ago

Many of the new laws are in states with a history of racial voting discrimination.

www.brennancenter.org

As if we need more evidence racism still exists in the United States.

 

[Toni]

I think that comparing the shortcomings of Harris and the shortcomings of Trump, who was her opponent, would have handily earned Harris the presidency if it were not for sexism and racism.

Trump had already had a disastrous first term that tanked the economy and severely worsened the COVID pandemic, particularly considering his looney pronouncements about treatments, dangers, etc. his outrageous behavior exposing hundreds of people to serve his vanity—for starters. For any person who has been alive and awake, Trump’s public utterances should have tanked any political attempts he made, period. But again, he defeated a woman.

Sexism is alive and well in the USA, along with racism. I’m get that white men don’t see it that way. Which is why we need to quit reflexively electing white men.

2024 was far more about a massive disinformation campaign than the actual positions.

I think it had absolutely nothing to do with issues and everything to do with preferring a man, preferably white. Given that Biden beat Trump, I think that gender was a big issue and so was race.

 

[Gospel]

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, I think you’re framing this too narrowly. You’re saying AA “did its job” and now it’s just dead weight, but the evidence shows otherwise. When California banned it, Black and Latino enrollment at UCLA and Berkeley dropped nearly 40% overnight. That wasn’t “mission accomplished,” that was entire pipelines collapsing. The point isn’t just about “who gets into which school.” It’s about what comes after: fewer Black and Latino lawyers, doctors, professors, and leaders. Those gaps don’t magically fix themselves, they reproduce inequality.

And it’s not really about “giving an unfair boost to the middle class.” It’s about recognizing that access to prep schools, test prep, and legacy advantages are already giant unfair boosts to wealthy white and Asian kids. Without something countering that, we don’t get “meritocracy,” we just resegregate higher ed and the professions it feeds

You seem to be purposely misconstruing my point, I’m not narrowing this to just one group, I’m highlighting the demographics that have historically benefited the most from AA. That includes minority groups across all races: white women, Hmong, Black, Latino, Native American, Southeast Asian, and others who would otherwise face barriers.

AA wasn’t a perfect tool, sure, but what’s the alternative? Removing it hasn’t created equality, it’s just dragged us back toward exclusion. That’s exactly why universities and Ivy League schools keep trying to implement diversity measures even after court rulings against AA. The real question is: how long can those workarounds last before the Supreme Court strikes down every last effort as unconstitutional?

I’m not sure why you and Derec keep arguing as if I’m defending AA itself. I’m defending the people who’ve actually benefited from it. I’d say I’ve been more than clear about that. I do, however, call out white-supremacist dog whistles when I notice them, so you’re right that those arguments touch on race. But that doesn’t mean my entire argument is about race.

 

[Gospel]

States Have Added Nearly 100 Restrictive Laws Since SCOTUS Gutted the Voting Rights Act 10 Years Ago

Many of the new laws are in states with a history of racial voting discrimination.

www.brennancenter.org

As if we need more evidence racism still exists in the United States.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I think that comparing the shortcomings of Harris and the shortcomings of Trump, who was her opponent, would have handily earned Harris the presidency if it were not for sexism and racism.

Trump had already had a disastrous first term that tanked the economy and severely worsened the COVID pandemic, particularly considering his looney pronouncements about treatments, dangers, etc. his outrageous behavior exposing hundreds of people to serve his vanity—for starters. For any person who has been alive and awake, Trump’s public utterances should have tanked any political attempts he made, period. But again, he defeated a woman.

Sexism is alive and well in the USA, along with racism. I’m get that white men don’t see it that way. Which is why we need to quit reflexively electing white men.

2024 was far more about a massive disinformation campaign than the actual positions.

I think it had absolutely nothing to do with issues and everything to do with preferring a man, preferably white. Given that Biden beat Trump, I think that gender was a big issue and so was race.

It was likely a factor, but Harris and Biden had an uphill battle to fight because of inflation. Much like how HW Bush took it for the recession.

Even women 18-29 and 45-64 dropped their support for the Dems from 67% to 61% and 56% to 49%, respectively. The drop seems to be Latino and "Other" related.

Personally, the drop of Democrat support in the 18-29 range, male and female is shocking.

 

[southernhybrid]

I don't know where to put an article I'm going to gift, but since there is a lot of talk about racism in this thread, I'll put it here.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/...e_code=1.f08.nODO.kYzAC4OJ5AYi&smid=url-share

The Founders of This New Development Say You Must Be White to Live There​

Housing rights experts say a community restricted to white residents is illegal, but the creators believe they could win a potential challenge in court in the current political climate.

The community’s two architects — a classically trained French horn player who has livestreamed his own sex videos, and a former jazz pianist arrested but not charged for attempted murder in Ecuador — say they must personally confirm that applicants are white before they can be welcomed in.

“Seeing someone who doesn’t present as white might lead us to, among other things, not admit that person,” said one founder, Eric Orwoll, who moonlights as a Platonic scholar on YouTube but is now focused on developing 160 acres in Ravenden, Ark., into a community strictly for white, heterosexual people called Return to the Land.

There's a lot more in the article. Of course, I doubt any nonwhite person would want to live with these racists, but if they get a pass, the problem is, it could make it much easier to bring back things like redlining or simply developing subdivisions for white people only. Sickening.

To date, there have been no legal challenges to Return to the Land. But John Relman, a civil rights lawyer who specializes in fair housing violations, said the group could be sued under not just the 1968 Fair Housing Act but also multiple sections of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1866.


“You’ve got a smoking gun case of intentional discrimination,” he said. “I think they’re misguided when they say that they’re home free.”

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Jebus! Well, SCOTUS smacked that sort of stuff out in 1968 in Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co. So quite possibly fodder for this SCOTUS. But I'd guess this would be a 7-2. I'd note, this place sounds less like housing and more like a white cult.

Representatives for America First Legal, the conservative advocacy group, did not respond to a request for comment on the community’s legal status. Representatives for Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas also did not respond to a request for comment.

Fuck! How far we have fallen back. Can't even provide what should be an easy response?

 

[Gospel]

Relax, they’re not being racist. Racism’s over, remember? That’s why AA was scrapped. This is just good old-fashioned classism (which, funny enough, AA was actually aimed at too). They’re all upper-class Americans, it’s just a wild statistical coincidence that so many upper-class Americans happen to be white. So naturally more white folks show up in these ‘exclusive’ neighborhoods. Right, Loren?

 

[southernhybrid]

What really got me was that the leaders of this disgusting group are big fans of philosophy, and while I've never been impressed with the little I've read from most of the ancient philosophers, I had no idea they could influence hate and bigotry so easily.

Diversity makes us stronger. it makes our lives more interesting to be able to share and learn about each other's culture and backgrounds. I will never understand racism or bigotry of any kind. I strongly agree with a black male friend of ours who told me he never wanted to live in an all white or an all black neighborhood. Maybe it's best to keep the worst of these racists out in the boonies where they won't harm anyone and can sit and enjoy their mindless bigotry. We are all human and should only care about that, not skin shade, hair style, wealth, language etc. Still, I do prefer dogs to humans. They don't hate other dogs based on their fur color or texture. ( couldn't help myself )

This is so sickening.

He attracted a following, including some commenters who responded with arguments about demographic shifts in the United States. They repeated ideas from what’s known as the Great Replacement theory — a conspiracy theory that nonwhite populations will replace white people through birthrates and mass migration — and racist pseudoscience about human intelligence and its link to genetics, an idea that has been broadly debunked by experts.



Mr. Orwoll also uses his office to record YouTube videos for his popular channel.
Those comments, he said, began to convince him that white people in America were being persecuted and that the fabric of the United States was fraying as its nonwhite populations grew. “I got red-pilled,” he said, using a term for awakening to a supposed hidden truth. “If we never had mass immigration, if we were still a homogeneous nation, we would not feel as much of a need to form communities like this,” he said.

Between his recorded musings on Plato, he began weaving in videos about elites in the United States and theories on how the genetics for blond hair and blue eyes spread across the globe through history.

 

[Derec]

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.

Original statement of "affirmative action" was actually just about how positive (or "affirmative") action was to be taken to combat actual instances of discrimination. It is from a 1965 executive order by LBJ.

The phrase was quickly perverted into its polar opposite - discriminating against some to help others, often by using quotas. In the 1978 Bakke case, the UC Davis medical school had a minimum quota for "minority" students. That was struck down, and since then, schools have been trying to implement racial preferences in a way that skirts the prohibition of outright quotas but still gives advantage to certain groups. An example being the system at University of Michigan that awarded points for being a certain race.

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.

People are individuals. They are not the average of experiences people who had a similar skin color to them had "historically". There is no logical reason that in 2025, a rich black daughter of a V103 DJ living in Buckhead should get admissions points over a daughter of an Appalachian coal miner.

That cumulative exclusion is what AA is aimed at.

And that is its biggest drawback. It's collectivist, and ignores the individual. It reduces people to faceless cyphers for their racial (or ethnolinguistic) category.

Pretending it’s just about “what somebody looks like” flattens the entire context and makes it sound like history didn’t happen.

Of course history happened. But bad things happened to everybody's ancestors at some point in history. And AA does reduce things to "what somebody looks like" or what language their ancestors spoke. Those are, at best, poor proxies for somebody's family history, and even worse for somebody's current situation.

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.

I am honest about outcomes. If enrollment at "elite campuses" dropped for certain groups, that just means that those groups were overrepresented at those campuses.

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.

First, we need to end the idea that disparate outcomes means discrimination. Second, coddling breeds complacency. Reversing the damage of the misguided policies of the last 60 years will take time, but it is the only way forward.
There should be strong standards in K-12 that prepares students of all backgrounds for college. No "equitable grading", no "gify fifty".
Plenty of schools have no-zeroes policies. And most teachers hate it, a new survey finds

About one in four teachers say their schools don’t give students zeroes. And nearly all of them hate it.
The collection of practices known as equitable grading, which includes not giving students zeroes, not taking off points for lateness, and letting students retake tests, has spread in the aftermath of the pandemic. But it wasn’t known how widespread the practices were.
A new nationally representative survey released Wednesday finds equitable grading practices are fairly common, though nowhere near universal. More than half of K-12 teachers said their school or district used at least one equitable grading practice.
The most common practice — and the one that drew the most heated opposition in the fall 2024 survey — is not giving students zeroes for missing assignments or failed tests. Just over a quarter of teachers said their school or district has a no-zeroes policy.
[...]
Schools that enrolled mostly students of color were more likely to have no-zeroes policies, the survey found. And middle schools were more likely than high schools and elementary schools to have no-zeroes policies, no-late-penalty policies, and retake policies.

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.

There is no segregation, there are no structural barriers in the UC system, and that has been the case for a long time.
But if enrollment of certain groups drops this heavily just because schools are no longer allowed to discriminate against other groups, then that just shows how heavily these schools had been discriminating. It is not an argument in favor of "affirmative action".

Elite colleges, public and private alike, are supposed to have challenging classes and a talented and prepared student body. If schools discriminate to admit students who are worse academically than others, then either they will fail more often, or the curriculum must be dumbed down to accommodate the new, politically correct, student body.

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.

I think doors should definitely be open. But it should be up to the student to be able to walk through those doors at the same terms as their peers who look different. There should be no separate, wider door for black and Latino applicants, nor for women.

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.

Again, is it up to the students to take advantage of the opportunities. Equity is a perverse concept, as it seeks equality of outcomes, no matter what, even if you impose stricter standards on some than to other based on race, ethnicity or gender.

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.

And by giving certain groups advantages over others, the achievement gap persists. Why work hard when you can get the same outcome anyway, just because of how you look?

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.

It is not closing off of pipelines. It is just that they have to fit through the same pipeline as their white and Asian brethren. No extra-wide pipeline you can just saunter through!

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.

How exactly would that work? And what would you do about black racists?
And if disparate outcomes still persist, despite "nuking racism", what would you do next?

 

[Derec]

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

How do you post on here from 1965 I wonder? Is it like that Keanu Reeves/Sandra Bullock movie (not Speed)?

 

[Derec]

I think that comparing the shortcomings of Harris and the shortcomings of Trump, who was her opponent, would have handily earned Harris the presidency if it were not for sexism and racism.

I disagree. There were strong headwinds against her - the inflation, the general anti-incumbent sentiment at play globally etc.

But a stronger candidate, even one non-white and female, could have won. Kamala just did not have it. To assume that it was "sexism and racism" is not warranted by evidence.

Trump had already had a disastrous first term that tanked the economy and severely worsened the COVID pandemic, particularly considering his looney pronouncements about treatments, dangers, etc. his outrageous behavior exposing hundreds of people to serve his vanity—for starters.

The economy actually did pretty well before the Pandemic. And I think Dems would most likely have lost 2020 without it and Trump's mishandling of it. But Biden mishandled the recovery, spending way too much (and wanting to spend trillions more!) and driving up the inflation. All because he listened to the Bernie/AOC wing of the party too much.
And it's not just me saying it. The left/progressives tend to agree that Biden was on their side.
Biden’s Democratic Party is to the left of Obama’s. Thank a progressive.
This overreach harmed the Biden administration. And Kamala Harris, one of the most left-wing Senators during her brief tenure, was not the right candidate to rectify the perception of veering too far to the left.

For any person who has been alive and awake, Trump’s public utterances should have tanked any political attempts he made, period. But again, he defeated a woman.

Well, I certainly did not vote for him. I voted for KH. But that does not mean that I have to be blind to her shortcomings.
Yes, both times Trump won his opponent was a woman. That's n=2, a very small sample size.
Furthermore, both these women were very flawed in their own ways, and in both cases they were imposed. DNC worked hard to discourage any heavy hitters (like Biden) from contesting the 2016 primaries so a repeat of 2008 would not happen. Even back in 2014, NY Times wrote about Planet Hillary.

And in 2024 we did not even have a primary, just a coronation. And Biden selected KH in 2020 because she had the right plumbing and skin color - most possible running mates were not even considered.

Sexism is alive and well in the USA, along with racism. I’m get that white men don’t see it that way. Which is why we need to quit reflexively electing white men.

That's very reductionist. But DNC should stop forcing female candidates because it's "their turn". The winning female candidate will have to emerge organically. Just like Obama did as first non-white president.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Loren, I think you’re framing this too narrowly. You’re saying AA “did its job” and now it’s just dead weight, but the evidence shows otherwise. When California banned it, Black and Latino enrollment at UCLA and Berkeley dropped nearly 40% overnight. That wasn’t “mission accomplished,” that was entire pipelines collapsing. The point isn’t just about “who gets into which school.” It’s about what comes after: fewer Black and Latino lawyers, doctors, professors, and leaders. Those gaps don’t magically fix themselves, they reproduce inequality.

This is only valid if you accept that a disparate outcome is proof of discrimination. And it still doesn't address that the number getting degrees went up. And I think degrees is a far better yardstick than admissions and I consider admitting people that end up flunking out a negative.

And it’s not really about “giving an unfair boost to the middle class.” It’s about recognizing that access to prep schools, test prep, and legacy advantages are already giant unfair boosts to wealthy white and Asian kids. Without something countering that, we don’t get “meritocracy,” we just resegregate higher ed and the professions it feeds

It's not "about", but that's what it does.

And all the test prep in the world isn't going to make a lot of difference. It's not the all-encompassing bogeyman you make it out to be. And it's not what most in the middle class get. Test scores aren't perfect but they have fared better than any attempt to make things more "fair".

AA wasn’t a perfect tool, sure, but what’s the alternative? Removing it hasn’t created equality, it’s just dragged us back toward exclusion. That’s exactly why universities and Ivy League schools keep trying to implement diversity measures even after court rulings against AA. The real question is: how long can those workarounds last before the Supreme Court strikes down every last effort as unconstitutional?

"What's the alternative?" That's virtually 100% of the time a hallmark of a bad argument. And you're assuming discrimination--I see the graduation rate as saying that the boost was counterproductive. In a fair admissions system you see the same graduation rate for all groups.

I’m not sure why you and Derec keep arguing as if I’m defending AA itself. I’m defending the people who’ve actually benefited from it. I’d say I’ve been more than clear about that. I do, however, call out white-supremacist dog whistles when I notice them, so you’re right that those arguments touch on race. But that doesn’t mean my entire argument is about race.

The problem is you see white supremicism in those of us who are simply saying we went too far. I do not want the bad old days, I want equality.