SCOTUS further restricts racial preferences

[Bomb#20]

You obviously have no idea what legacy admissions are all about. They are, and have been for 100 years. affirmative action for white people.

A funny sort of affirmative action for white people, when it's affirmative action that the great majority of white people aren't eligible for. I take it if Harvard were to decide Palestinians are an oppressed people so Palestinian students will be accepted with lower grades than other students, you'd call that "affirmative action for Asians"?

And now that the Supreme Court’s right-wing white contingent has thrown out affirmative action, whites will be doubly aided, as they were before affirmative action began. But if affirmative action violates equal protection, how can it be that legacy admissions do not?

Seems to me under the reasoning of SFFA v UNC, they probably do. If some rejected student sues UNC or another state school and the numbers show he'd have been accepted if it weren't for their legacy program, I think he'd have a good chance of winning.

It's a little different with a private school -- Harvard discriminating against non-legacy students isn't state action. What makes racial discrimination in Harvard admissions an equal protection violation is the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlaws racial discrimination in admissions. When the government chooses to enforce that law on schools that discriminate against black and Latin-American students but not enforce it on schools that discriminate against white and Asian students, that selective enforcement is what makes it an equal protection violation. But there's no issue of selective enforcement with legacy admissions, because there's currently no law against legacy admissions. So if you want to do away with legacy admissions at private schools, you probably need to convince Congress, not the SC.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Professors have been complaining about the lower quality of the students for many DECADES. Adjusting curriculum to deal with the abilities and knowledge of the audience was going on when the SAT and ACT were ubiquitiously used. Eliminating their use will have little effect on "watering down".

Look upthread. This is not professors complaining about declining student quality, but an observed decline in class materials.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's a little different with a private school -- Harvard discriminating against non-legacy students isn't state action. What makes racial discrimination in Harvard admissions an equal protection violation is the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlaws racial discrimination in admissions. When the government chooses to enforce that law on schools that discriminate against black and Latin-American students but not enforce it on schools that discriminate against white and Asian students, that selective enforcement is what makes it an equal protection violation. But there's no issue of selective enforcement with legacy admissions, because there's currently no law against legacy admissions. So if you want to do away with legacy admissions at private schools, you probably need to convince Congress, not the SC.

Exactly. Just because something has a racial influence (legacy admissions skewing white) doesn't make it racially motivated. Legacy admission predate the civil rights era, they are not an attempt to discriminate.

 

[laughing dog]

It's a little different with a private school -- Harvard discriminating against non-legacy students isn't state action. What makes racial discrimination in Harvard admissions an equal protection violation is the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlaws racial discrimination in admissions. When the government chooses to enforce that law on schools that discriminate against black and Latin-American students but not enforce it on schools that discriminate against white and Asian students, that selective enforcement is what makes it an equal protection violation. But there's no issue of selective enforcement with legacy admissions, because there's currently no law against legacy admissions. So if you want to do away with legacy admissions at private schools, you probably need to convince Congress, not the SC.

Exactly. Just because something has a racial influence (legacy admissions skewing white) doesn't make it racially motivated. Legacy admission predate the civil rights era, they are not an attempt to discriminate.

Your argument makes no sense. There was plenty of racial discrimination before the "civil rights era". Moreover, legacy admissions do discriminate - against the poor.

Whether legacy admissions were intended to institute racial discrimination is something we cannot know for certain. But even if it was not intended to discriminate based on race at the time it was instituted, it is quite possible racial discrimination was one reason to continue its practice.

 

[Bomb#20]

Exactly. Just because something has a racial influence (legacy admissions skewing white) doesn't make it racially motivated. Legacy admission predate the civil rights era, they are not an attempt to discriminate.

Your argument makes no sense. There was plenty of racial discrimination before the "civil rights era".

I think what he was getting at is that if universities' intent had been to discriminate racially they wouldn't have disguised it by using legacy status as a proxy for race -- they would have just done it openly, since before the civil rights era it was legal. So it does make some sense; but it's a pretty flimsy argument. Just because "No more blacks" and "No more Jews" were legal doesn't mean they were respectable. University administrators have always cared about their school's image.

 

[pood]

Exactly. Just because something has a racial influence (legacy admissions skewing white) doesn't make it racially motivated. Legacy admission predate the civil rights era, they are not an attempt to discriminate.

Incorrect, according to Forbes. Discrimination was precisely the intent.

 

[laughing dog]

Exactly. Just because something has a racial influence (legacy admissions skewing white) doesn't make it racially motivated. Legacy admission predate the civil rights era, they are not an attempt to discriminate.

Your argument makes no sense. There was plenty of racial discrimination before the "civil rights era".

I think what he was getting at is that if universities' intent had been to discriminate racially they wouldn't have disguised it by using legacy status as a proxy for race -- they would have just done it openly, since before the civil rights era it was legal. So it does make some sense; but it's a pretty flimsy argument. Just because "No more blacks" and "No more Jews" were legal doesn't mean they were respectable. University administrators have always cared about their school's image.

Very true. Harvard discriminated against Jews for decades. For example, one of the reasons that both the U. of Chicago and MIT department of economics became some prominent is that they would hire Jews while Harvard would not.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's a little different with a private school -- Harvard discriminating against non-legacy students isn't state action. What makes racial discrimination in Harvard admissions an equal protection violation is the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlaws racial discrimination in admissions. When the government chooses to enforce that law on schools that discriminate against black and Latin-American students but not enforce it on schools that discriminate against white and Asian students, that selective enforcement is what makes it an equal protection violation. But there's no issue of selective enforcement with legacy admissions, because there's currently no law against legacy admissions. So if you want to do away with legacy admissions at private schools, you probably need to convince Congress, not the SC.

Exactly. Just because something has a racial influence (legacy admissions skewing white) doesn't make it racially motivated. Legacy admission predate the civil rights era, they are not an attempt to discriminate.

Your argument makes no sense. There was plenty of racial discrimination before the "civil rights era". Moreover, legacy admissions do discriminate - against the poor.

The point is they could discriminate quite openly, they had no reason for subterfuge. Thus the idea that they were intended to discriminate is ludicrous.

I do agree they discriminate against the poor--but so virtually every measure they use to select students.

Whether legacy admissions were intended to institute racial discrimination is something we cannot know for certain. But even if it was not intended to discriminate based on race at the time it was instituted, it is quite possible racial discrimination was one reason to continue its practice.

They are actively discriminating against whites in their admissions policy. Why in the world do you think they would stealthily be discriminating in favor of whites?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Exactly. Just because something has a racial influence (legacy admissions skewing white) doesn't make it racially motivated. Legacy admission predate the civil rights era, they are not an attempt to discriminate.

Your argument makes no sense. There was plenty of racial discrimination before the "civil rights era".

I think what he was getting at is that if universities' intent had been to discriminate racially they wouldn't have disguised it by using legacy status as a proxy for race -- they would have just done it openly, since before the civil rights era it was legal. So it does make some sense; but it's a pretty flimsy argument. Just because "No more blacks" and "No more Jews" were legal doesn't mean they were respectable. University administrators have always cared about their school's image.

Both were socially acceptable positions back then and they did so openly. Thus why also do so stealthily?

 

[Bomb#20]

... Just because "No more blacks" and "No more Jews" were legal doesn't mean they were respectable. University administrators have always cared about their school's image.

Both were socially acceptable positions back then and they did so openly. Thus why also do so stealthily?

Hey, Harvard is currently discriminating against Asians openly and stealthily at the same time.

In any event, "socially acceptable" varies by audience. Racial discrimination has always been controversial. If part of the community will approve of you doing it and part will condemn you for it, whether you do it openly or stealthily is going to depend on whether you give a hoot about the opinions of the segment of the community who'd condemn you for it.

Also, keep in mind that antisemitism became widely disreputable long before anti-black prejudice did. Heck, Nietzsche was writing polemics against antisemites while casually taking black inferiority for granted, way back in the 1870s. So there was an extended period when it was normal to discriminate against blacks openly and Jews stealthily.