American Politics

[xi0]

Would have liked to think this is fake but after his campaign was posting fake AI images of him making out with Fauci I guess anything is possible

--- Double Post Merged, Jul 1, 2023, Original Post Date: Jul 1, 2023 ---

My point is not that they shouldn’t get a job, but that merit should be the only thing considered.

Merit isn't the only thing considered with or without affirmative action. You're right, it SHOULD be like that, but it isn't. Affirmative action is an attempt to mitigate discriminatory practices.

We should be teaching kids at a young age why discrimination is wrong, and continuing a culture of shaming racists and those who do discriminate.

Absolutely correct, but does that mean we as a society should just keep waiting for a supposed "better" generation that a large portion of the country doesn't believe should exist in the first place?

Maybe I'm way out of pocket here (and don't hesitate to tell me btw) and I'm not equating your thought process to this necessarily, but saying that this is the only way to address this issue is kind of akin to the people who only want to talk about a mental health "epidemic" when talking about gun violence. It's ignoring the fact that in many many cases, people will not consider black and minority candidates for things like university or employment unless they're forced to.

 

[M3J]

Did you read the outcome of that lawsuit? His family let it quietly die because the FAA ruled him 100% at fault for his own demise.
What I’m saying re: not knowing if he was a diversity hire, is that there’s never a way to know. Companies don’t exactly tell you you’re the diversity hire. I assume he was based on the fact that he ever passed a flight exam to begin with.

--- Double Post Merged, Jul 1, 2023, Original Post Date: Jul 1, 2023 ---

I know the history well. My wife has been targeted in discrimination for being pregnant. As I said I also mentored many black software engineers from varying backgrounds. My point is not that they shouldn’t get a job, but that merit should be the only thing considered. We should be teaching kids at a young age why discrimination is wrong, and continuing a culture of shaming racists and those who do discriminate. Creating a number requirement just makes the problem easy for employers to bullshit their way through. It was much more helpful for breaking ground in the 60s but were past that point now.

That doesn't necessarily mean he was a diversity hire as opposed to deceiving his employer into thinking he was highly competent.

Affirmative Action and diversity hiring increases the chances of merit-based hiring rather than hiring due to connection or race. Employers likely don't even want diversity hiring because it means spending more money, but it's also not the movement's fault that your company didn't do a better job of hiring.

So what do we do about parents who teach their kids discrimination is okay? And parents who interfere with teachings and argue against schools teaching this and that? And people like centrists defending racists and bigots while going after those who call out the bigots?

 

[Franckie]

The real life impact of affirmative action is modest. This is the roughest back-of-the-envelope calculation:

• There are perhaps 100 highly selective universities in the US where affirmative action makes a significant difference in enrollment.
• About 4% of Black high school students attend these universities.
• Without affirmative action, that number will be cut in half.

So the impact of the Supreme Court's ban on affirmative action is that roughly 2% of Black students will attend selective universities (UCLA, NYU, Tulane) rather than highly selective universities (Harvard, Northwestern, USC, Princeton). In numbers, that comes to 35,000 or so.

So what's the real impact of 2% of Black kids attending UCLA instead of USC? Tulane instead of Harvard? It's probably not huge. Life will stay exactly the same for the 96% of Black kids who don't benefit from affirmative action in the first place and for the 2% who attend highly selective universities regardless. The remaining 2% will now attend excellent but not quite elite universities.

In theory, the end of affirmative action is a blow to fairness and racial equity. In practice, it probably doesn't make quite as much difference as we might think:

Decades of affirmative action have increased the racial diversity on some of the most selective college campuses that often serve as the primary pipeline into high-status careers. But there isn’t much conclusive evidence affirmative-action policies have leveled the playing field in the U.S. Even as America overall has become more racially diverse, wealth gaps between whites and many minorities have proved persistent and top jobs remain elusive.
....Studies have shown that minorities, after graduating, have attained foot-in-the-door positions but leadership roles largely remain out of reach in the legal world, hospitals and corporate boardrooms.

There is so much more that has to be done. Affirmative action helped, but it was never more than a pinprick.

 

[xi0]

The real life impact of affirmative action is modest. This is the roughest back-of-the-envelope calculation:

• There are perhaps 100 highly selective universities in the US where affirmative action makes a significant difference in enrollment.
• About 4% of Black high school students attend these universities.
• Without affirmative action, that number will be cut in half.

So the impact of the Supreme Court's ban on affirmative action is that roughly 2% of Black students will attend selective universities (UCLA, NYU, Tulane) rather than highly selective universities (Harvard, Northwestern, USC, Princeton). In numbers, that comes to 35,000 or so.

So what's the real impact of 2% of Black kids attending UCLA instead of USC? Tulane instead of Harvard? It's probably not huge. Life will stay exactly the same for the 96% of Black kids who don't benefit from affirmative action in the first place and for the 2% who attend highly selective universities regardless. The remaining 2% will now attend excellent but not quite elite universities.

In theory, the end of affirmative action is a blow to fairness and racial equity. In practice, it probably doesn't make quite as much difference as we might think:

There is so much more that has to be done. Affirmative action helped, but it was never more than a pinprick.

It feels like you're completely ignoring the potential knock-on effects of decisions such as this, though? Judging by the kind of case that was brought forth that led to this decision, lawyers for all of the top 100 corporations and rich assholes with no hobbies will be lining up to do the same thing to DEI practices in employment. This is not something that will only affect 2% of black students.

The decision was absurd even if it affected 1 person, and in nearly any other SCOTUS term this wouldn't have happened. This isn't a value judgment on affirmative action and whether it was doing a good enough job justifying its existence, it was a ruling that said it was unconstitutional. Those are very different things.

--- Double Post Merged, Jul 2, 2023, Original Post Date: Jul 2, 2023 ---

Did some light reading on this case and it's the most mindnumbingly stupid thing I've ever read. Navel-gazing moron allowing judicial leeches called "Alliance Defending Freedom" to take a "case" like this all the way to the SCOTUS and effectively weaken discrimination laws. All because marriage equality frightens her.

 

[M3J]

Did you read the outcome of that lawsuit? His family let it quietly die because the FAA ruled him 100% at fault for his own demise.
What I’m saying re: not knowing if he was a diversity hire, is that there’s never a way to know. Companies don’t exactly tell you you’re the diversity hire. I assume he was based on the fact that he ever passed a flight exam to begin with.

--- Double Post Merged, Jul 1, 2023, Original Post Date: Jul 1, 2023 ---

Also, why are you not criticizing your company for doing a bad job in hiring someone? The airline company for hiring the pilot without doing a more thorough background check? How is it "diversity's" fault that these people got hired? It wouldn't have forced either company to hire them, especially if they had more choices. And how do you know you weren't a diversity hire? Your wife?

 

[catagon87]

Also, why are you not criticizing your company for doing a bad job in hiring someone? The airline company for hiring the pilot without doing a more thorough background check? How is it "diversity's" fault that these people got hired? It wouldn't have forced either company to hire them, especially if they had more choices. And how do you know you weren't a diversity hire? Your wife?

My wife owns her practice now, and I’m not exactly in the minority with my race and field. Lol.

I do criticize the companies. My whole point though is that AA is dated and poorly implemented.

--- Double Post Merged, Jul 3, 2023, Original Post Date: Jul 3, 2023 ---

That doesn't necessarily mean he was a diversity hire as opposed to deceiving his employer into thinking he was highly competent.

Affirmative Action and diversity hiring increases the chances of merit-based hiring rather than hiring due to connection or race. Employers likely don't even want diversity hiring because it means spending more money, but it's also not the movement's fault that your company didn't do a better job of hiring.

I think a lot of this depends on what field you're in. I'm in tech and you'd be completely wrong about employers not wanting to hire based on diversity. I've literally never worked somewhere where they aren't constantly talking about it.

I'm also specifically talking about larger companies. I've worked for plenty of companies, including a few of the largest companies in the world. They do want diversity.

I'd be happy to hear your advice on how the multi-billion dollar companies I've worked for could improve their hiring process. The fact of the matter is that a lot of the reasons certain groups are so underrepresented in particular fields is because they have little interest in working in those fields on a broad range. I graduated with a CS degree at a large university. We had two women graduate in my class, one black guy, and a fuckton of Asians/Whites/Indians graduate. If you need to hire X person to be compliant with affirmative action, and literally nobody applies to the role, what do you do then? The reality isn't that you have 1000 people of color and women applying to be a Software Architect or Developer. It's that you have 1000 people apply to it, and 999 of them are east asian / Indian / white males. The process already includes multiple technical interviews, and background checks.

So what do we do about parents who teach their kids discrimination is okay? And parents who interfere with teachings and argue against schools teaching this and that? And people like centrists defending racists and bigots while going after those who call out the bigots?

The problem is you can never fix everything. I can only speak to my own experience about this stuff which isn't worth any more or less than your own. We can all sit on a high horse and act like we have all the answers, but we don't. What I can say is that in my experience the system in place has been flawed at best. I think you misunderstand a bit about where I'm coming from. I'm not saying employers should be able to discriminate across the board. I personally feel that merit should be 80% of why you hire and retain someone, and the other 20% should be somewhat related to how big of an asshole they are or are not.

 

[kkck]

To me affirmative action at the college level feels simply like... duct tape on the education system as a whole, specifically at the high school level. You have wide quality discrepancies in it across counties which in turn clearly reflects in minority's access to higher education. Compound to that higher education being absurdly and increasingly more expensive. Affirmative action as far as I can tell has yielded lackluster results over the past few decades but I don't see how that will change going forward without bringing more parity to the public education system. Neither republicans nor democrats nor most people in general have the inclination to take steps to actually solve that.

 

[xi0]

To me affirmative action at the college level feels simply like... duct tape on the education system as a whole, specifically at the high school level. You have wide quality discrepancies in it across counties which in turn clearly reflects in minority's access to higher education. Compound to that higher education being absurdly and increasingly more expensive. Affirmative action as far as I can tell has yielded lackluster results over the past few decades but I don't see how that will change going forward without bringing more parity to the public education system. Neither republicans nor democrats nor most people in general have the inclination to take steps to actually solve that.

One party is at least willing to fund it, while the other has repeatedly threatened to abolish the Department of Education entirely. These people do not care about how affirmative action works or what it's designed to address, they care about using anything as an excuse to victimize themselves.

 

[catagon87]

One party is at least willing to fund it, while the other has repeatedly threatened to abolish the Department of Education entirely. These people do not care about how affirmative action works or what it's designed to address, they care about using anything as an excuse to victimize themselves.

I think that's kind of what I take issue with. Bearing in mind that @kkck did specifically mention the political parties, there is this sense that criticizing the efforts of one party is an endorsement of the other. I'm at the point with Republicans where I kind of write off most of what they say. I mean, have you ever followed up with Rick Perry saying he wanted to eliminate the DOEnergy and Education, and how actually working with the DOEnergy changed his mind? A lot of the Republicans don't understand 90% of what the organizations they constantly criticize actually do or how they function.

I think it's fair to say that AA is like a bandaid. If anything its existence has stifled more progressive approaches to dealing with this problem. It simply existed for about 60 years.

 

[kkck]

One party is at least willing to fund it, while the other has repeatedly threatened to abolish the Department of Education entirely. These people do not care about how affirmative action works or what it's designed to address, they care about using anything as an excuse to victimize themselves.

I am somewhat skeptic of democrats willing to actually support measures that would help address this. Sure, funding, but it is quite easy for a congressman to approve funding for something. It takes exactly zero effort. Take for instance affordable housing... How many people would be willing to have affordable housing in their neighborhoods or near them? As far as I can tell this is pretty much not a thing in the US nowadays. Heck, this could easily tie into poorer folk having access to better schools. But would democrats in congress actually vote for this to happen in their neighborhoods? Or would democrats vote for congressmen running on this? I mention bringing parity to public school funding... But would democrats support this? Either legislators or voters who live in nice neighborhoods with funded schools? This is not something that would immediately make all public schools awesome, if anything it's a pretty bitter pill to swallow in hopes that this works out for a better future... But it takes actual political will and effort to do it.

 

[M3J]

My wife owns her practice now, and I’m not exactly in the minority with my race and field. Lol.

I do criticize the companies. My whole point though is that AA is dated and poorly implemented.

--- Double Post Merged, Jul 3, 2023, Original Post Date: Jul 3, 2023 ---

You are a minority as an Asian American, however.

You keep talking about diversity though, keep bringing it up as if though it's responsible for your company and that airline hiring the wrong people.

I think a lot of this depends on what field you're in. I'm in tech and you'd be completely wrong about employers not wanting to hire based on diversity. I've literally never worked somewhere where they aren't constantly talking about it.

I'm also specifically talking about larger companies. I've worked for plenty of companies, including a few of the largest companies in the world. They do want diversity.

I'd be happy to hear your advice on how the multi-billion dollar companies I've worked for could improve their hiring process. The fact of the matter is that a lot of the reasons certain groups are so underrepresented in particular fields is because they have little interest in working in those fields on a broad range. I graduated with a CS degree at a large university. We had two women graduate in my class, one black guy, and a fuckton of Asians/Whites/Indians graduate. If you need to hire X person to be compliant with affirmative action, and literally nobody applies to the role, what do you do then? The reality isn't that you have 1000 people of color and women applying to be a Software Architect or Developer. It's that you have 1000 people apply to it, and 999 of them are east asian / Indian / white males. The process already includes multiple technical interviews, and background checks.



The problem is you can never fix everything. I can only speak to my own experience about this stuff which isn't worth any more or less than your own. We can all sit on a high horse and act like we have all the answers, but we don't. What I can say is that in my experience the system in place has been flawed at best. I think you misunderstand a bit about where I'm coming from. I'm not saying employers should be able to discriminate across the board. I personally feel that merit should be 80% of why you hire and retain someone, and the other 20% should be somewhat related to how big of an asshole they are or are not.

Why do they want to hire based on diversity? Forced to, cheaper labor with more skills, or?


Better background check, tests, etc.

I'm saying if merit based hires and admissions worked, then we wouldn't need Affirmative Action. Problem is, they don't work, bias comes into play, especially against Black people.

 

[xi0]

I think that's kind of what I take issue with. Bearing in mind that @kkck did specifically mention the political parties, there is this sense that criticizing the efforts of one party is an endorsement of the other. I'm at the point with Republicans where I kind of write off most of what they say. I mean, have you ever followed up with Rick Perry saying he wanted to eliminate the DOEnergy and Education, and how actually working with the DOEnergy changed his mind? A lot of the Republicans don't understand 90% of what the organizations they constantly criticize actually do or how they function.

I think it's fair to say that AA is like a bandaid. If anything its existence has stifled more progressive approaches to dealing with this problem. It simply existed for about 60 years.

Perry only says that because it would invalidate his work. He had balls taking the job in the first place though.

In what way has it stifled more progressive approaches though? What approaches would that be? If it's not addressing educational or workplace discrimination directly then how can it be counted on to get results? At least any more than affirmative action has.

I am somewhat skeptic of democrats willing to actually support measures that would help address this. Sure, funding, but it is quite easy for a congressman to approve funding for something. It takes exactly zero effort. Take for instance affordable housing... How many people would be willing to have affordable housing in their neighborhoods or near them? As far as I can tell this is pretty much not a thing in the US nowadays. Heck, this could easily tie into poorer folk having access to better schools. But would democrats in congress actually vote for this to happen in their neighborhoods? Or would democrats vote for congressmen running on this? I mention bringing parity to public school funding... But would democrats support this? Either legislators or voters who live in nice neighborhoods with funded schools? This is not something that would immediately make all public schools awesome, if anything it's a pretty bitter pill to swallow in hopes that this works out for a better future... But it takes actual political will and effort to do it.

The whole NIMBY thing is definitely an awful facet of aesthetic liberalism, sure, but I don't think it's completely comparable to the topic of education. Conservatives want to nuke it out of existence or starve it to death and want to count on the "free market" to fix it with a voucher program. It's not unlike their approach to deleting welfare programs and expecting christian charities to do the government's job.

--- Double Post Merged, Jul 4, 2023, Original Post Date: Jul 4, 2023 ---

I know it's an oversimplification but Dems will say education is terrible underserved, it needs more funding not less, teachers are not paid enough for their labor, etc.

The GOP just says "no, lol"

 

[kkck]

The whole NIMBY thing is definitely an awful facet of aesthetic liberalism, sure, but I don't think it's completely comparable to the topic of education. Conservatives want to nuke it out of existence or starve it to death and want to count on the "free market" to fix it with a voucher program. It's not unlike their approach to deleting welfare programs and expecting christian charities to do the government's job.

More than comparable I was trying to frame those as connected. As in, coherent (or at least existent) affordable housing policies would allow poorer folk access to better schools which in turn would help the whole meritocracy thing going better than before. Don't get me wrong, in most cases I support free markets and stuff but redirecting public funds meant for public education towards the private sector should be regarded as unethical, if not criminal in most cases (I wouldn't rule out the possibility of very limited cases where using public funds to send kids to private schools can hypothetically be reasonable but it shouldn't ever be the norm).

 

[xi0]

ohhh.... they're not going to like that tweet LOL

--- Double Post Merged, Jul 5, 2023, Original Post Date: Jul 5, 2023 ---

More than comparable I was trying to frame those as connected. As in, coherent (or at least existent) affordable housing policies would allow poorer folk access to better schools which in turn would help the whole meritocracy thing going better than before. Don't get me wrong, in most cases I support free markets and stuff but redirecting public funds meant for public education towards the private sector should be regarded as unethical, if not criminal in most cases (I wouldn't rule out the possibility of very limited cases where using public funds to send kids to private schools can hypothetically be reasonable but it shouldn't ever be the norm).

Well we're in agreement there. These kinds of issues need multipronged approaches anyway. I didn't want to frame the AA debate as if it was sufficient or anything, but justifying it being nixed for "constitutional" reasons because of perceived ineffectiveness is just doing their job of propagandizing for them. It's not like their motivation in crying about it is to replace it with anything useful. They have no policy prescriptions. So IMO a loss is a loss, and it's not like they'll stop here either.

 

[catagon87]

Perry only says that because it would invalidate his work. He had balls taking the job in the first place though.

In what way has it stifled more progressive approaches though? What approaches would that be? If it's not addressing educational or workplace discrimination directly then how can it be counted on to get results? At least any more than affirmative action has.

Putting a generic patch to fix a complex problem stifles because people assume it's fixed and move on. It's a half measure.

 

[xi0]

Putting a generic patch to fix a complex problem stifles because people assume it's fixed and move on. It's a half measure.

I think people with expertise in this area don't assume that the problem is fixed, as most of their work was being done while Affirmative Action has existed. Whether the average person thinks it sufficiently addresses the issue isn't relevant, or shouldn't be relevant in discussions of it's legality.

I just don't believe it stifled anything at all, and the issue will not be better addressed without it. There's zero reason to have any faith in that happening as the motivation to get rid of it wasn't based on it being inadequate or outdated, it was based on the attitude that the problem it's supposed to address doesn't actually exist in the first place.

 

[catagon87]

I think people with expertise in this area don't assume that the problem is fixed, as most of their work was being done while Affirmative Action has existed. Whether the average person thinks it sufficiently addresses the issue isn't relevant, or shouldn't be relevant in discussions of it's legality.

I just don't believe it stifled anything at all, and the issue will not be better addressed without it. There's zero reason to have any faith in that happening as the motivation to get rid of it wasn't based on it being inadequate or outdated, it was based on the attitude that the problem it's supposed to address doesn't actually exist in the first place.

The problem is how politics works and how this stuff actually does get addressed, though. It doesn't matter if experts assume the problem is fixed or not, what matters is what the elected Government thinks is fixed or not. I think it was well intentioned and probably worked really well when it was implemented, but like many laws and actions, they get out dated with the test of time.

 

[kkck]

Well we're in agreement there. These kinds of issues need multipronged approaches anyway. I didn't want to frame the AA debate as if it was sufficient or anything, but justifying it being nixed for "constitutional" reasons because of perceived ineffectiveness is just doing their job of propagandizing for them. It's not like their motivation in crying about it is to replace it with anything useful. They have no policy prescriptions. So IMO a loss is a loss, and it's not like they'll stop here either.

Is... that what happened? I thought the scotus argument was that it was a straight up discriminatory practice thus unconstitutional.

 

[M3J]

That argument is bullshit, AA evened the playing field and added a bit of meritocracy as opposed to wealth and race or whatnot. If colleges recruited fairy, scholarships chose winners fairly, and jobs hired fairly, we wouldn't need AA or diversity or group=specific scholarships.

 

[xi0]

The problem is how politics works and how this stuff actually does get addressed, though. It doesn't matter if experts assume the problem is fixed or not, what matters is what the elected Government thinks is fixed or not. I think it was well intentioned and probably worked really well when it was implemented, but like many laws and actions, they get out dated with the test of time.

The elected government didn't decide anything about this issue, the SCOTUS did. One that's hilariously imbalanced and has more than 1 compromised member.

Why would it work well when it was implemented but not now? Do you think its absence mean that things will just stay the same or headed in the same direction? Because I certainly don't see a reason to believe that.

Is... that what happened? I thought the scotus argument was that it was a straight up discriminatory practice thus unconstitutional.

I wasn't saying that was what the SCOTUS did, I'm saying that is how people are justifying or coping with the decision.

I mean, who do you think paid the legal fees for the case in order for it to be appealed enough to be heard by the SCOTUS? What do you think the motivation was to run it up the pole to the highest court in the country? Trump's Justice department submitted amicus curiae briefs at every turn. The original case didn't even put forth the assertion that Asian people were being discriminated against in favor black people or other minorities, it was suggesting they were being discriminated against in favor of whites... sort of sounds like the entire point of AA existing in the first place to me.

--- Double Post Merged, Jul 13, 2023, Original Post Date: Jul 8, 2023 ---

--- Double Post Merged, Jul 13, 2023 ---

If no one on that court is able to be held accountable, explain why Democrats aren't stacking the court?

--- Double Post Merged, Jul 13, 2023 ---

Not that that would be an answer to this level of corruption... but in lieu of not impeaching this embarrassing pervert...idk