The Real Story Behind Abigail Fisher
This is a good expose of the real story behind Abigail Fisher, the lead plaintiff in the case attempting to destroy the remnants of affirmative action in higher education admissions. In short, Fisher was a respectable but hardly exceptional student who simply did not have the grades or SAT scores to get into the University of Texas. Most of the students who got into UT with lower grades for special reasons were also white. Basically, the white supremacists behind the destruction of affirmative action saw Fisher as a perfect person to fight any system that considers race at all for admissions, but the case itself is exceptionally weak.
Not that its weakness will stop at least 4 Supreme Court justices from ruling in her favor.
The “white supremacists” would include the non-whites against it and whites who are not “white supremacists” against it too.
The whites who would not get a seat because of AA of this sort would likely be marginal sorts, who might, but might not, get the last seats if a ‘plus’ wasn’t in place. The more superior students will get in anyways. This ‘plus’ can be something else too. Abigail Fisher’s own situation, which is on some level interesting, is somewhat (honestly) not that important.
Looking at the actual plaintiffs in test cases, they are not always great examples, though they might be strategically useful ones.
In many ways this is an example of the occasional absurdities thrown up by the “live case or controversy” doctrine. Of course, would we be shocked if the situation was reversed and this was an old-school discrimination case in which the plaintiff had already graduated from college and the case was dismissed for being moot?
As far as I know, no one is suggesting that this case should be dismissed under mootness doctrine. Even if there were such a suggestion, there is the well established “capable of repetition yet evading review” exception to mootness.
The more basic problem here is that Fisher wasn’t injured.
Fisher’s argument relies on the assumption that consideration of race in admissions injured her. If she was not injured, she does not have standing to bring this case.
Groups that do impact litigation can spend years looking for the right plaintiff. I’m assuming from the umbrage you took at the use of “white supremacists” that you don’t agree with affirmative action on principle; doesn’t the fact that the best plaintiff Blum could find wasn’t actually injured by the policy give you pause?
The first thing I said when I read about the case and Abigail Fisher was, “this was the best they could find?” And in spite of this, it’s extremely likely that the SCOTUS will rule in her favor. Even now I am surprised, to be honest.
Just today, I was reading a Slashdot post about a SCOTUS decision on first sale doctrine and a lot of the commentators were (in that smug Slashdot way) talking about how the judges don’t rule for anyone but the law and carefully interpret decisions. Come join us in the real world folks…
Assume away. You wouldn’t be right, but assume away.
I took umbrage because there is some real disagreement on AA and even if I don’t agree with the opposition, it is clear that they aren’t just white supremacists. Especially the non-white opponents, such as the divided Asians in the briefs.
This is a test case. If taking race into account is wrong, there is SOMEONE out there on the margins that would have got in. There is a limited number of slots. Certain things are taken into consideration that leads to some people not to get in. It’s hard to tell who really.
I’m for looser standing rules. If we want to get technical about this one fine. I’m sure that is what matters here. If we agreed on the merits, Prof. Loomis would call attention to the plaintiff chosen. Sure thing.
I’m not trying to put words in your mouth, but it really sounds like you’re saying that the fact that this plaintiff wasn’t actually injured by this policy is less important than your intuition that there exists some hypothetical plaintiff who would be able to show injury. I’m not willing to concede that your hypothetical plaintiff exists. Conservative interest groups have been attacking affirmative action through the courts for 30+ years, and these are the kinds of plaintiffs they bring forward. At some point, the lack of empirical support for the anti-affirmative action position needs to be made an issue.
Admissions is a zero-sum game. If race has any impact, someone is losing a spot because of it. Put another way, the only way there isn’t a hypothetical plaintiff with injury is if the racial component to the scoring completely fails to do what it was designed to do in all cases.
Personally, I’m in favor of AA in these types of circumstances. But I don’t pretend it has no impact – it would be a worthless policy that was pointless to defend if that were the case.
Yes.
at least
45 Supreme Court justicesFixed!
Can’t I be optimistic for a minute here?
No
Too bad the original typo wasn’t ’3 5′. That would have been way more fitting for this discussion.
Opposition to affirmative action doesn’t imply white supremacism, just a preference for procedural over substantive conceptions of justice. That said, I think embracing procedural justice exclusively, in a world of extant and obvious trans-generational racial inequality, is short-sighted and stupid. But opposition to affirmative action and opposition to, say, the Voting Rights Act, are two different kinds of things entirely.
This is a perceptive comment that made me think a bit.
I think embracing procedural justice exclusively, in a world of extant and obvious trans-generational racial inequality, is short-sighted and stupid.
It’s also a strategy for white people to retain a set of views that substantively uphold the system of white supremacy they benefit from, without having to bear the psychological costs of squaring racist views with whatever universalist or egalitarian sentiments they have. I don’t see a particularly good reason to write such a strategy out of our understanding or what constitutes racism.
I agree. A conviction that procedure is sufficient is a pretty common starting point for many privileged people. (It was for me, and I don’t think it’s fair to expect others to be better than me. :) ) What happens, though, is that we face evidence that procedure is not sufficient. Then we have to decide whether to allow for revision of our earlier ideas or to engage in some form of denial of the reality. Naivete becomes racism if and when people choose to cling to it in the face of the evidence.
This.
Knowingly benefiting from white privilege while defending the structure of that privilege is still racist.
Knowingly?
In your experience, does the typical affirmative-action opponent demonstrate a high degree of perceptiveness about how dynamics of race and privilege play out in our society?
I guess I’d define “knowingly” as seeing opposition to affirmative action as defending your own position in society. Actual perceptiveness of how race and privilege work may not be necessary.
“In your experience, does the typical affirmative-action opponent demonstrate a high degree of perceptiveness about how dynamics of race and privilege play out in our society?”
quite the opposite. they display a studied ignorance, about how the dynamics of race and privilage play out in our society. it usually takes one of two forms:
1. it’s not fair that my (white) race is seemingly working against me now. of course, the fact that, for centuries, it worked in their favor is quickly dismissed as irrelevant, if it’s mentioned at all.
2. we are supposed to be beyond all that racial shit, and become a true meritocracy. AA is an unnecessary relic of a bygone era. that racial discrimination can still be empirically proven to exist is ignored or casually swept away, as immaterial.
yes, AA is inherently discriminatory. then, so are practically all other considerations for admission, up to and including grades and test scores, when you take into account that african americans have a higher propensity for attending poorer high schools, than their white counterparts.
Mostly because it’s untrue. Nobody has been alive “for centuries.” It may have worked in some other white person’s favor a century ago, but so what? All white people aren’t fungible any more than all black people are.
It’s like the old joke: “I keep reading about how us Jews control the banks. Great, so when do I get my cut?”
(Even if one wanted to abandon the claim about “whites” generally, and instead claim that one inherits the benefits of one’s ancestors, (a) it’s unlikely that any benefits from centuries ago would still be felt now, and (b) most white Americans’ ancestors were not plantation owners three centuries ago; they were serfs in Europe.)
Shorter David: what wealth gap?
Whoosh!
Is Abigail Fisher wealthy?
If not, what difference would some “wealth gap” between someone other than Fisher and someone other than the other applicants to the school matter?
And if that were the issue, then why wouldn’t the school give preferences based on wealth rather than race?
Shorter David: Admissions departments should ignore statistics.
By George, he has finally gotten it, even though he doesn’t realize it! Just like an employer cannot use “statistics” to refuse to hire a black applicant on the grounds that, statistically speaking, blacks have less education than whites, and a cop cannot stop a black person based on crime statistics.
That’s pretty much the essence of racism: judging an individual person by the “statistics” of her race rather than on individual characteristics.
(By the way, the “shorter” shtick really stopped being funny about five minutes after it started. Either you falsely characterize what was said, and look dishonest, as above, or you truthfully do so, and look foolish for not realizing it, as now.)
Slavery was the only meaningful discrimination ever practiced in the United States.
The “attending poorer high schools” criterion I understand (and agree with), but why discriminate on the basis of race, of all things?
With all this talk about privilege, at least 95% of all people are nowhere near as privileged as, say, Clarence Thomas’ son. So, why should he be favored over a kid from a trailer park? That just doesn’t make any sense.
“Being Clarence Thomas’s son” will make a much bigger impact on Clarence Thomas’s son’s life than any Affirmative Action program ever will.
It is so cute the way the pretend Marxist agrees with the glibertarian.
He doesn’t; I didn’t advocate preferences for the poor. I said only that such preferences would more directly address the issue you claim to care about than racial preferences do.
It’s posts like these that underscore just how unpopular affirmative action is with the general public. Whenever a case like this comes up, we have people talking about how student X wasn’t actually hurt by affirmative action (and, on the flip side, we often hear about how student Y “received no benefits because of his/her race/ethnicity). Maybe it’s true that Abigail Fisher wouldn’t have gotten in even if racial preferences were abolished. The reality is, however, that the entire affirmative action by its very nature will lead to cases where someone with inferior academic credentials is admitted to someone with superior academic credentials. That doesn’t mean that it’s unfair- certain groups face serious obstacles that whites never have to deal with and I think it’s entirely reasonable for the college admissions process to that into account- but saying “student X wasn’t hurt by affirmative action” is a total dead end that only sounds good in an echo chamber.
Well, I would have gone to Harvard and Oxford if only my grades, SATs and extracurriculars were better, so naturally I blame the minorities.
This is contentless obfuscation of the fact that affirmative action by design leads to instances where someone gets in over someone with a superior academic record. Why is this so hard to defend?
It isn’t. A “superior academic record” isn’t the whole story in admissions, partly because schools and teachers are variable. Maybe someone gets in over you because…they’re good at sports. Let us abolish sports.
More to the point, let us abolish legacy preferences.
Let us abolish sports.
I would be completely fine with abolishing 100% of college athletics. I’ve never understood why institutions of higher education should be paying even a penny for sports teams. Students can form their own intramural teams if they want to play sports in their spare time.
I’d be mostly fine with it; I’m not big on people ruining themselves for little return. There’s a place in academia for sports though: people do it, people can learn things from it.
What’s more, I think football would be a lot more fun for the spectators if they had to play in their doctoral robes, too.
Was my post more or less obfuscation than complaining about affirmative action (disclaimer: may not contain actual affirmative action)?
I guess you missed the memo that this is Assuming Bad Faith Week here in LGM comments. If you even suspect anyone’s opinion deviates from your own in any way, you’re required to at least imply that they may secretly be Jonah Goldberg.
Bonus points if you can spell out “FASCIST PIG” with the first letters of each line.
(not talking about anyone in particular; there’s just been a serious uptick in rancor this week for some reason)
But is it because people are assuming bad faith or exhibiting it? The AA implies people with inferior credentials get in seems like a straight up bad faith line.
Especially in comments on a post where the main point is the falsity of that talking point. I feel my original comment stands, and if anything undersold, as I forgot to include the fact that I REALLY (well not really, I knew I was never going to Harvard) wanted to go to those schools.
It’s a popular fallacy. How many average people know enough about statistics or the college application process to avoid thinking that? It took decades for people to realize that Wins isn’t the best judge of a Cy Young candidate, for chrissake!
And, of course, in this case, AA’s enemies work hard to further the misperception. And they were given a boost in the 90′s, when a lot of HR managers got into a bad habit of telling near-miss white candidates that they “had to hire a minority” to cushion the blow.
And they were given a boost in the 90′s, when a lot of HR managers got into a bad habit of telling near-miss white candidates that they “had to hire a minority” to cushion the blow.
This. Fucking this.
It’s also very close to being the definition of affirmative action. I don’t have a problem with it, but it seems people have a bizarre attachment to the idea that affirmative action is only a tiebreaker or that it has never meant that anyone has failed to get admitted somewhere.
Doth protest too much about your lack if problems.
For
Assuming
Such bad faith,
CaptBackslap,
Is a
Superb
Technique for
Posts comprising
Incoherent
Garbage.
You’re welcome.
Oh, how can I stay mad at you?
One and three-quarter marks; you lost a half for the extra ‘comprising,’ but gained a quarter for actually using it correctly.
This isn’t true. Take a situation like Harvard undergraduate admissions, in which they have a huge surplus of extremely-qualified candidates, and are picking and choosing among a large body of students with equivalent records.
This. Contrary to the popular delusion, each applicant is not reducible to a single number out to six decimal places that can be compared with every other applicant’s number.
This is also not true! There are major disparities in academic credentials by race even at the most elite schools. You are simply making that claim up.
Can you throw us some evidence?
Academic credentials have never been the sole criterion. What about sports, activities, community service? And even with grades, how do you compare GPAs from different high schools? If you look at SATs, are you just rewarding the kids who could afford prep courses?
(I test great, and got scholarships as a result. But I’m also lazy, and some harder-working kid who didn’t make 1570 on the SAT might have been a better choice.)
There is no magic scale to measure applicants and find who is Truly Worthy. So colleges make do with inadequate systems that they KNOW are inadequate. So, if you’ve admitted a class of 500 and only 3 kids are black, is that a good result, or should you remember that your heuristic is imperfect? Is it a good experience for 497 white kids to attend college together?
All this is obvious to people who trouble themselves to think about it.
You’re right that those are criteria for admission, but it’s seldom discussed that they’re fucking terrible criteria for admission. Who gives a shit if someone was President of the Dogwanking Club* for two years? That doesn’t predict anything about college grades. What it does do is lead to a huge number of Winkelvoss-ass junior corporate tools infesting our elite colleges and universities. And we can all agree that no one really likes that happening. And that’s another reason to get rid of legacy admissions.
I’ll admit to being biased by my horrible experience in National Honor Society, which comprised going to one meeting and quitting in disgust.
*I might be showing my age, since most schools got rid of that club over a decade ago.
Your are on to something there. The public has been sold a story that college admissions are meritocratic and can be reduced to SAT scores plus GPA. Hence when student A does not get accepted and learns that x number of minorities with lower “academic” scores did they go apeshit about the injustices of AA.
Meanwhile, no one knows how poorly the SAT correlates with college grades and how much scores are related to family income.
Very few will learn that 30% of the legacy admits were in the bottom quintile of the class or the hockey team are a bunch of nitwits or that the university turned down
2000 kids with 4.0 GPAs and admitedt 250 B students due to “special” talents.
College admissions have never been based on strict meritocracy.
If all other credentials are equal, Asian-Americans need to score 140 points more than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics, and 450 points above African-Americans on the math and reading sections of the SAT to have the same chance of admission to an elite, private college.
I don’t doubt you, but can you link to the study that came to this conclusion?
“This is contentless obfuscation of the fact that affirmative action by design leads to instances where someone gets in over someone with a superior academic record. Why is this so hard to defend?”
i would agree, if only grades and test scores are and always have been, the only criteria for admissions. of course, they never have been, before or after AA. because of that, your argument immediately fails the credibility test.
This is undoubtedly true. For example, in this case, 89.4% of those people were white.
This is just another case of people building up a fantasy based on ideology rather than reality, and doubling down on it when confronted with facts. We see it in the gun debates too, where people think more people shooting in a dark theater or a college campus really would make us safer.
An echo chamber … or a Federal court concerned with standing doctrine.
Look, I’ll gladly admit that “Fisher wasn’t injured” may piss more people off than it wins over. But this isn’t about politics; the lobbying group here isn’t endorsing legislators or campaigning for a referendum to ban affirmative action in state schools. They’re using the federal courts to try to declare unconstitutional a policy that could be eliminated politically at any time by the Texas legislature.
True also, of Roe v. Wade.
The reality is, however, that the entire affirmative action by its very nature will lead to cases where someone with inferior academic credentials is admitted to someone with superior academic credentials
No, the reality is that affirmative action usually involves picking from a pool of roughly equally qualified applicants. And the argument against affirmative action based on comparing “inferior academic credentials” to “superior academic credentials” usually involves differences in acadmeic credientials that are objectively, meaningless. OMG, the kid with the 1420 SAT score who went to the underfunded urban high school got in ahead of the kid with the 1421 score who went to the rich school in the suburbs!
This is brought up many times, but it is a total lie. To give one of the most famous examples, Michigan’s affirmative action policy gave applicants 20 “points” for being an URM, while one’s GPA could be worth up to 80 points and SAT scores could be worth up to 12 points (100 points were required for admission.” Average black SAT scores at top universities tend to at least 100 (and often 300+) points lower than the average for the university.
And that is why nobody is as oppressed as white christian males.
Another attribution of a position never taken. There are plenty of reasonable justifications for affirmative action, it’s just that people seem determined to defend it in ways that make no sense.
It’s a position taken on a daily basis. You’re simply clever enough to understand that you must disguise your views and preferences if you wish to be taken seriously by normal people. No doubt there are others like you but cleverer, clever enough to do their disguising effectively.
You said something that annoys me, therefore you must believe in insane things.
No, Bill. You don’t annoy me.
…which proves what, exactly?
Averages are just that: average. They don’t represent an individual’s scores. By your admission, they’re only worth 12 points of the total applicant score; GPA was way more important. If you can show that the GPA of black students was lower than that of white students, that might mean something, but only citing discrepancies in SAT scores is barely relevant, if at all.
You can ignore the SAT scores bit if you want, but the 20 point bonus is worth a full point of GPA, in other words, a URM with a 2.5 GPA is on the same level as a white student with a 3.5 GPA. That is an enormous difference and those who attempt to minimize it are doing themselves no favors.
Shit, man, the poor white kids. My heart bleeds.
Actually, poor white kids are one of the groups getting screwed in the current admissions game. Researchers at Penn examined “highly qualified” students at highly selective universities and found those from the lower three quintiles were underrepresented by about 14 percentage points combined. (1 from bottom, 4 from 2nd
and 9 from the middle)
Affirmative action played a small role but costs and legacy admissions were seeing has having a greater impact since students from the most affluent quintile were over represented by a staggering 21 points.
Funny you would tell this story to me, who got into U of M Law in part because as a kid from Oklahoma, I was treated as a UMR.
Michigan also gave bonus points for being a legacy, coming from an underrepresented county in Michigan and coming from an underrepresented state. Legacies and the folks from small population counties are overwhelmingly white.
If you were a 6’7″ power forward, or could run a sub-4.6 40 in pads, how many points did you get?
All of them.
Plus a cheerleader. Or whatever the fuck a wealthy booster thought you should have.
And underrepresented sex within your major. At least for awhile, it was a thing for dudes to apply into the nursing program, and then transfer to another program after a year. I’m assuming that at some point the school’s dean shouted “this knavery shall not stand” and made changes, but you never know.
100 points lower than average on the SAT…compared to how comparatively disadvantaged African Americans are socioeconomically, isn’t even statistically meaningless…it suggests that these African Americans are actually quite better than average students.
How about the 500 points higher an Asian needs to score to have the same chance at acceptance. Are the African American students better than them? What about the Asian student compared to the half of the “black” undergraduates at Harvard who are not African American but generally well to do foreign nationals?
FTFY:
College admittance decisions are inherently subjective and always have been. Children of alumni get preference at private schools, while at state schools, out-of-state students may get an extra boost because they’ll have to pay full tuition, allowing the school to provide more aid to in-state students.
I’m sure that in 1987 there were freshman applicants rejected from Stanford who had higher total SAT scores and GPA’s than I did. And I’m sure the fact that I was black didn’t hurt me any. But neither did the fact that my verbal SAT score was very high or that I’d taken 4 AP classes and scored a 4 or better on the AP exam on all of them. Maybe someone thought it was interesting that I’d had a leadership position in a city-wide student organization, or they liked my essay, or something my teachers said in their recommendations. Assuming that the only reason you didn’t get into a school was because you were white screams entitlement to me.
What is this “the only reason” nonsense? Of course there are a multitude of reasons why someone can be accepted or rejected. That doesn’t change the fact that affirmative action can result in someone with otherwise inferior credentials getting in over someone with otherwise superior credentials. If that didn’t happen, it wouldn’t a very effective or meaningful policy.
That doesn’t change the fact that affirmative action can result in someone with otherwise inferior credentials getting in over someone with otherwise superior credentials.
That doesn’t change the fact that athletic ability can result in someone with otherwise inferior credentials getting in over someone with otherwise superior credentials.
That doesn’t change the fact that parents that can pay the tuition can result in someone with otherwise inferior credentials getting in over someone with otherwise superior credentials.
That doesn’t change the fact that being a legacy can result in someone with otherwise inferior credentials getting in over someone with otherwise superior credentials.
That doesn’t change the fact that having one type of extracurricular as opposed to another can result in someone with otherwise inferior credentials getting in over someone with otherwise superior credentials.
Funny how one of these bothers you.
Insert handwaving about you putting words in his mouth.
Yes, funny how people care more about racial discrimination than other, non-invidious forms of discrimination. Brown is not considered a seminal case because it ruled that students had to be assigned to schools without regard to athletic ability or whether their siblings attended the school. The Civil Rights Act (as amended) was not considered landmark legislation for outlawing discrimination in real estate transactions based on the ability to pay.
It’s discrimination based on race that is the great evil.
Who says that, say, legacy preferences are non-invidious? Even a reactionary Supreme Court was capable of seeing that grandfather clauses were tantamount to race discrimination.
Grandfather clauses were pretextual. They were drafted only after blacks were (theoretically) given the vote, by people who didn’t want blacks to vote, for the sole purpose of keeping blacks from actually voting, and were written in such a way as to do precisely that while not affecting whites.
Nobody thinks legacy preferences in college admissions are pretextual, though, do they? They existed even before blacks were admitted at all, and were not crafted to keep blacks out, but to preserve a continuity of tradition and to suck up to wealthy alumni. Even the most liberal schools that extensively use racial preferences in admissions still employ legacy preferences.
Shorter David: favoring wealthy white folks is nothing at all like discriminating against poor black folks.
Favoring wealthy people (not “white folks”) is not the same as discriminating against black people (not “poor black folks.”) One is racial, and one is not. Seriously, it’s hard to believe, even having read this site for years, that you can’t grasp this.
(Note that once again, you mistakenly think that the issue is wealth, rather than some other issue. Legacy preferences are not the same thing as wealth preferences. Poor legacies get the same benefit from legacy preferences as rich legacies do.
Meanwhile, the original grandfather clauses in voting were expressly designed to exclude all blacks, poor or not.)
And you can make an accurate, unbiased determination of superiority / inferiority how, exactly?
As has been pointed out over and over in this thread, those “credentials” are skewed massively by the environment a student comes from. A 1420 SAT score may tell us very different things about different applicants, depending on their backgrounds.
And yes, relevant characteristics in one’s background is often highly correlated with race.
Since the disparity between the demographics of UT and those of Texas as a whole are the result of well-documented actions taken by the State of Texas itself, if I were in Texas I’d be suing for equal protection if the public universities *didn’t* have affirmative action. I’m guessing that would go nowhere though.
Hasn’t Jennifer Gratz shown that one can make a decent living on the wingnut welfare circuit by getting rejected by a major public university?
This. And I seem to recall that the admission statistics in her case were quite similar to this one. It always made for a lively discussion in my section of “Contemporary Issues of U.S. Politics”
I’m assuming the Courts below didn’t buy UT’s arguement that she wouldn’t have received admission even without affirmative action. Otherwise, how did this case get to the Supremes?
Out of the Fifth Circuit? Merits?
Pull the other leg, it’s got bells on it.
Because the victim of a discriminatory policy need not show that he would have received the benefit of a particular program if not for the policy; the failure to be allowed to compete on an equal footing is the injury.
See, e.g., Turner v. Fouche, 396 US 346, 362 (1970).
The most noteworthy of the amicus briefs in favor of affirmative action was filed by roughly 40 military commanders, who argued: “For the United States military, a highly qualified and racially diverse officer corps is not a lofty ideal. It is a mission-critical national security interest.”
The officers’ brief, available here, expressly referred to the epidemic of “fragging” in Vietnam that peaked during the years 1969 and 1970. “Bereft of minority officers as support and as a visible proof of overall fairness and that our Armed Forces recognized them as valuable contributors, many black troops lost confidence in the military as an institution,” the officers wrote.
The officers’ amicus brief noted that the military advantages of “diversity” include “the likelihood that the US military ‘knows the enemy’ ” and “a cultural understanding of the populations in which we may be deployed.” In other words, affirmative action helps US imperialism by making the military more adept at occupying other countries and subjugating their populations. The brief cited—twice—the key phrase in Grutter that the purpose of affirmative action is “to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry.”
…The historic fight for social equality cannot be squared with a scheme to legitimize inequality by making select minorities a party to it. What is necessary is an uncompromising struggle to unite the working class across all racial, ethnic, and national lines to destroy inequality and the capitalist system that produces it.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/10/cour-o19.html
Affirmative action waived on account of whining. Awesome.
Doesn’t Texas have a law where the top 10 percent of any high school in the state gets automatic admission?
This is obviously incredibly discriminatory against those that go to better schools! Will not someone think about the privileged?!
If I’m not mistaken, there is a nascent legal challenge making basically this argument. (I know, citation needed).
You are mistaken. The challenge in Fisher is to a separate policy that utilizes racial preferences to fill the balance of the class after the Top 10 policy is applied.
Sometimes I wonder if anyone purposely tries to transfer to a crappy high school to game the system.
Aren’t all schools in Texas crappy? (I joke, I joke!)
Sure, but by the time you transfer to A&M, all hope is basically lost anyway.
Texas Tech just called and wants to challenge you to a duel. We are sick of the Aggie jokes, and want in on the action. We’re just as crappy as A&M!
Please note that Mr. Tuberville is doing his good works in Ohio now.
The idea behind race based affirmative action is that it is on some level appropriate to take race into consideration when determining admissions to promote diversity and address inequality overall. This is not a violation of “equal protection” since it is legitimate classification and overall it in some fashion balances the playing field (citations of “when affirmative action is white”) etc. The argument is well known and can be discussed in more detail and more eloquently than this quickie imperfect thumbnail.
Others disagree to some extent, including regarding the specific usage of race in question. When illegitimate factors skewer a system of applicants it is repeatedly hard to know exactly who is harmed. If Fisher wasn’t “harmed” by an “illegitimate” system, someone was. The whole idea is that the system does SOMETHING. We hope it is valid and good. I ultimately want the system to be judged and I think on some level saying Fisher wasn’t harmed misses the point. Is statistically analysis now wrong, since we won’t be able to pinpoint exact victims?
I support affirmative action. Everyone who does not, including some blacks, Asians and whites here, are not “white supremacists.” There is enough simplistic thinking going on here (see, e.g., a column by Linda Greenhouse) w/o more.
There are principled reasons to oppose affirmative action, sure, just like there are principled reasons to oppose abortion. It’s just that when you look at the people who are ginning up these challenges, paying the lawyers, stoking the rage machine,they aren’t the principled people. It’s about keeping blacks or women down.
Whoever up thread wrote “this isn’t supposed to be politics” because its in court … c’mon, really?
Lani Guinier and a handful of other lefties are opposed to race based affirmative action as it is constructed now. She has written about moving to a class based system of preference and there is some research on how student bodies could be constructed under different class based preference systems so the percentages of URMs admitted stays about the same as now.
That speaks with too broad of a brush. There are some true believers out there. We might think them misguided or fools, but that is different from saying they are unprincipled. Some principles are bad.
To paraphrase Megyn Kelly speaking to Karl Rove, “Do you really believe this, or is this just math you do as a liberal to make yourself feel better?”
I believe it, if you are a representative of those stoking the outrage.
Above, you say
In a thread devoted to an article which states the facts about the policy thusly:
Did you think we didn’t read the article about the policy you so grossly mis-characterize as “racial preferences”?
Not sure who “we” is; as for you, I don’t know if not reading or not understanding is your problem, since the part you quote is consistent with what I said. It “utilizes racial preferences.” I didn’t say that race was the sole criterion (How could it be? There would have to be, at least, some way to distinguish between various minority applicants.) I said that race was used.
Oh, please. What a pathetic dodge. If you meant that, all you had to do was say “uses racial preferences, as a small part of the process that includes many non-racial factors.” But you didn’t do that, did you?
Still not sure whether not reading or not understanding is your problem. Why would I use 15 words when 3 would convey the same relevant information?
What is the saying? When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. When the law is on your side, pound the law. When neither is on your side, pound the table.
If you learned nothing else in law-talkin’ school, you sure as hell learned that, Davey.
Actually, the saying is, “When neither is on your side, scream racism and sexism.”
That Atlantic article was great in laying out the facts, but I found the ending curious. The guy basically states Fisher and her lawyer won’t win but doesn’t say why. If only I were that confident.
My sense with that was that the author believed it would be a ruling that slightly closed the door to considering race but probably wouldn’t go all the way, leading the jerk organizing this stuff to seek out someone else for another case.
I am a UT alum and live in Austin. Neither of my sons will go there because they are white, male, and most importantly, not in the top 8% (it’s not the top 10 anymore) of their high school classes. I understand the reason for considering race in admissions, and I support all of UT’s policies, but I can’t help but be a little miserable that my kids are going to suffer for those rules. I’m not wealthy enough to ensure that they will stay in the middle class unless they get into and succeed at a good college. The choice for people like my sons is either make good grades and get into a good college or live in a decaying trailer park with meth dealers and do hard, disgusting physical labor with stupid people for company. Also, the fact that my sons are not academic superstars reflects poorly on mine and my husband’s parenting. Good parents produce children who are high achievers. My older son — age 15 next month — has no idea what he wants to so in life and each day he loses one more chance to make something of his life. For middle class parents, race-conscious admissions policies are just one more hurdle in a grueling race to keep our children in decent lives.
If the gap between working class life and professional life is really that enormous, that has everything to do with large political economy factors, and nothing to do with “race-conscious admissions policies.”*
*Which, if you had read the article and this thread, is a very poor name for the reality of college admissions, in which “race” is a very small, and very often inconsequential, factor.
I realize that. I agree with the existing policy. I think progressives need to acknowledge when discussing this that parents don’t hear a reasonable factual explanation of policies, they hear someone taking food out of their kids’ mouths. Our response is then straight from the medulla and not amenable to argument.
I hear that. But realizing that you’ve fallen for the emotion manipulation line is the first step, which you do here, but not in the first comment.
And yes, the gap between working-class life and professional life really is that enormous. I used to do construction law and spent my days trying to get something resembling a coherent answer from the workers. I learned, among other skills, always to cover my nostrils with Vicks vaporub to kill their stench.
This is where I sign off with a hearty “grow up.”
That’s classist crap. I worked for a company that serviced the construction trades for something like seven years, and I never had that experience.
Um, wow.
It was Texas in the summer and they worked outdoors.
Sure, I can definitely imagine that someone doing physical labor outdoors, particularly when it’s hot, is not going to exactly smell like a rose. The “um, wow” reaction was a comment on what looked to me like the contempt for such people in your comment.
I wasn’t at all clear on the point. It’s a risk when posting before the second cup of coffee. We tried once to get the supervisors to let us do the interviews at the beginning of the shifts, but we were shot down, for the very good reason that the shifts started at 4 am or so in the hottest months.
Okay, I get it. Still, I’d say there’s a fair amount of real estate between “upper-middle/middle class professional career” and “condenmned to live next door to a meth lab”.
Go fuck yourself, you classist piece of garbage. I doubt you’ve ever actually done a hard day’s work in your life. Unlike whatever it is you do, what they do is absolutely critical to a functional society.
Ask yourself how your worries differ from a mother living in East Austin then get back to us.
They don’t. Neither one of us is going to calm and objective about this. We have to find a way to address the mammal-brain terrors of both groups.
The assumptions behind that statement are almost heartbreaking in their naivete.
Would you please elaborate?
Yes, do elaborate on the stench of the working class.
Ah, yeah, I remember you from a thread a few weeks ago, wringing your hands about how your 15-year-old son doesn’t yet know what he wants to do when he grows up, and you’re terrified that he won’t go to a “top school,” because everyone who’s worth anything goes to a top school.
What nonsense. Good parents produce children who are emotionally healthy and ethical in their treatment of others. A lot of parents of “high achievers” are control-freak assholes who drive their kids into eating disorders, drug abuse, and nervous breakdowns.
My parents are far from perfect but I’m glad they’re not you.
What are the odds of a student of color getting in with her numbers? If there are a solid contingent of minorities with her stats getting rejected, I feel like that would necessarily nuke the case.
Karate Bearfighter cited this bit above:
So I would say yeah, that’s a pretty solid contingent. But I’m not at all confident of how this will turn out.
Is it actually true that “There were people in my [Fisher's] class with lower grades … who were being accepted into UT …” ?
Especially given that out of all the applicants there were only (1)841 discretionary slots available and (2)five black or Latino students (of all the applicants) with lower test scores and grades than Fisher who received provisional admission.
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