Affirmative Action [Archive] - Civilization Fanatics' Forums

SiLL

May 18, 2012, 11:59 AM

I'll follow the call to the Chamber and will add my exchange with Mise so far beginning with the quote of the OP.
I'll for context also add most of my response to Masada from which I reused a part in my conversation with Mise.

For me, wage quotas and points-based affirmative action are two sides of the same coin.
For me they are not, because while I have nothing to argue against your comparison, the point of minimum wage is to actually help people in a disadvantage, while the point of race-based AA is to help races in disadvantage.
And to quote myself

To look at the statistics, to see there the statistical disadvantage of black people and to then conclude that black people deserve help, that's cool with me. That this is supposed to trump the fact that people in general need help is not. I see only one justification for such an attitude: That it is more important to support disadvantaged races rather than individuals. And this is, while maybe not racist in the original sense of the word, still race-inspired pure awfulness if you ask me. It is still a thinking that on all levels weights the interests of one race higher than the other, just in the misguided opinion that this was justified. But I got to ask directly: If we have a disadvantaged black kid and a disadvantaged white kid, which while for different reasons hold the same socio-economic disadvantage, does the white kid deserve less support because his ancestors were not enslaved?

(Almost) full post:
I am honestly not sure what your point is. Oppressed minorities can (and usually do) to this day inherit the woes suffered by their ancestors, be it African-Americans or Australian indigenous. Which on average will put members of those minorities in a worse position than the national average. I understand this and am actually surprised that you feel the need to go into such lengths to describe this.
I in deed also support the wish to fight this. However, I don't think that a member of such a minority which is not well off due to socio-economic reasons deserves to be helped any more than a member of the majority which isn't well off due to socio-economic reasons. Hence my suggestion to focus on the socio-economic background. That starts with family income, it can go on with the parents educations, a bad neighborhood where someone grew up or whatever. I haven't exactly cracked my head over all the possibilities, but it is my impression that a lot of factors can be used which are - on the indivdual level - more just than something as encompassing and general as race.

To look at the statistics, to see there the statistical disadvantage of black people and to then conclude that black people deserve help, that's cool with me. That this is supposed to trump the fact that people in general need help is not. I see only one justification for such an attitude: That it is more important to support disadvantaged races rather than individuals. And this is, while maybe not racist in the original sense of the word, still race-inspired pure awfulness if you ask me. It is still a thinking that on all levels weights the interests of one race higher than the other, just in the misguided opinion that this was justified. But I got to ask directly: If we have a disadvantaged black kid and a disadvantaged white kid, which while for different reasons hold the same socio-economic disadvantage, does the white kid deserve less support because his ancestors were not enslaved?

People do respond, that white people simply don't have as much trouble. Well sure, that is why looking at the socio-economic background will likely result in a majority of non-whites profiting. And that then is perfectly fine and just.

But as it is, AA seems to create a ton of situations where there is no justice to speak of. Where minorities simply take advantage of this program to unduly profit from it. And of course they do and can, because nobody even asks otherwise.

Which means, that my beef is in the end not primarily with the practical shortcomings of race-based AA (though they are part of the argument), like it were in case of someone arguing against minimum wage, but with the point of such a measure to begin with. Which is to help races instead of individuals. If such a race really is in need, helping individuals in need should totally suffice.

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Mise, I am afraid I still don't agree with you, but I will make an effort to make everything as comprehensive and clear as necessary. I would appreciate it if you respected that and make room for the possibility that I may too have a point worth of consideration.

No, he doesn't "deserve" less support. Everyone is deserving of however much support they need to live a fulfilling life; as a Liberal that is something I believe in passionately and will defend vehemently. And, exactly to that point, the white kid doesn't need as much support, because the challenges facing an under-privilaged white man are significantly less difficult to overcome than the challenges facing an under-privilaged black man. In addition to being underprivilaged, the black man is also black, and faces problems that a white man will simply never face. As I said in response to kochmann, we know that when you control for all possible factors, including socio-economic background, blacks, women, gays etc are still disadvantaged; they get paid less, they are given fewer interviews, they are given fewer university places, they are given fewer opportunities at work, fewer opportunities for promotion, and so on. That's just a fact, and I implore you to seriously consider that your assumptions are just flat out wrong. You can't say that socio-economic factors are the only important factors; race, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities, and so on -- these are all factors as well by themselves. You, in particular, much more than certain others in this thread, are intellectually capable enough, and intellectually curious enough, to both explore and understand the quantitative statistics and qualitative problems that disadvantaged groups face on a daily basis. There is a reason why certain groups are labelled as being "disadvantaged", and it's not because we on the liberal left have all suddenly succomb to collective lunacy and turned into dispicable racists.

I know that this is commonly accepted as a fact, and I agree, but do you know actually of a single study that does control for socio-economic and at best also cultural factors and which shows the actual significance of race for success in life? I just looked on google for half an hour and did not find a thing (I could tell you though that even though black women die more often from breast cancer, race does not actually play a significant role ;)). To know the actual dimensions would probably be quit helpful, but I don't know where to take it from.

Anyway, let me expand on what you said. You differentiated between racial discrimination and socio-economic factors. Which is important for my argument as well.
I talked a lot about how socio-economic factors were superior to racial factors and you respond by claiming that socio-economic factors would not account for contemporary racial discrimination. This is wrong. It does indirectly, because any socio-economic situation will also be a result of race, as I am sure you will agree. Additionally, it in this sense will also ensure that those members of a given race really benefit, which are also in actual apparent need to do so.

Now you say racial AA is justified in that it does further control for such discrimination. And that of course is true. I don't doubt that this has an impact on how well a race does. Now the obvious drawback of this approach is that it is every unspecific. In practice, it will assume every member of a racial minority to be discriminated against. And that plain and simple means that racial AA is not a measure to duly benefit disadvantaged individuals, but as said a disadvantaged race. On an individual basis, as I already said in another post, IMO something resembling justice can not be expected and quit ordinarily, the opposite will take place. For the natural reason, that race is, on the individual level, not a statistic, but a very diverse influence, which will in many cases not mean a significant disadvantage. And that, I would say, is also a fact.

And given that already socio-economic approaches will benefit minority races dis-proportionally and hence will do a lot in leveling the playing field, I am left to wonder why such a crude instrument as AA is still seen as necessary. And I suggest, that that is so because people are more interested in improving the statistical success of a race than individuals which are actually in need. That people are so focused on those statistics, that they loose the actual reality -taking place on individual levels - out of sight.

luiz

May 18, 2012, 12:10 PM

I know that this is commonly accepted as a fact, and I agree, but do you know actually of a single study that does control for socio-economic and at best also cultural factors and which shows the actual significance of race for success in life?
Actually, I've done some econometric studies using American data myself, and once you control for socio-economic factors (from parents education level to growing up on a broken home), you find that race does not usually play a statistically significant role.

SiLL

May 18, 2012, 12:39 PM

That sounds interesting, but can you expand on that or show data or whatever? I am sure you can imagine that it is hard to just take your word for it.

JollyRoger

May 18, 2012, 12:49 PM

If it's true that Elizabeth Warren had any advantages because of having (supposedly) 1/32 of indian ancestry it'll become one of my favorite examples of the absurdity of racial policies (along with the identical twins who were classified in different races by a Brazilian university).
What would you think of a 1/32nd blood becoming Chief of a tribe?

Mise

May 18, 2012, 12:51 PM

@Mise: who is "we"? I certainly don't agree with the benefits of racial quotas. I think that decades of race-based AA worldwide, from Malaysia to the US, have produced far more harm than good. The minorities who catched up with the majority group didn't need AA; the minorities who get AA never caught up. It's an abject failure.
The "we" I'm talking about is merely "people who agree with AA". Or perhaps liberal left-wingers in general, since the arguments in favour of AA typically coincide with arguments in favour of anti-discrimination laws more generally, and they are typically espoused by the liberal left.

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@SiLL, I'm going to answer in a different order to the way you posted, because I think it will help to structure the discussion more clearly.

Anyway, let me expand on what you said. You differentiated between racial discrimination and socio-economic factors. Which is important for my argument as well.
I talked a lot about how socio-economic factors were superior to racial factors and you respond by claiming that socio-economic factors would not account for contemporary racial discrimination. This is wrong. It does indirectly, because any socio-economic situation will also be a result of race, as I am sure you will agree. Additionally, it in this sense will also ensure that those members of a given race really benefit, which are also in actual apparent need to do so.
(highlighting mine)

Sorry, I didn't understand the last sentence, so I hope I'm not misinterpreting this part of your post. You say "this is wrong" - is that not what we are trying to establish? Isn't it absolutely essential that we reach an agreement on whether racial discrimination, even when you control for socio-economic factors, still exists?

To put it more clearly, if I can prove to you that, when you control for all socio-economic factors, a black man will still have fewer opportunities, lower wages, and so on, than an equivalently poor white man, will you agree that AA is necessary?

The rest of your post seems to rest on the assumption that socio-economic factors are sufficiently correlated with race to eliminate all differences between races. I agree that, if there was no racial discrimination in the West, and if all differences between races could be explained by socio-economic factors, that tackling tackling poverty etc would be enough to wipe out racial differences. What I'm saying is that this assumption isn't true, and various studies have shown this, so I hope we can narrow the discussion to just this one point: Can differences between races be explained entirely by socio-economic factors?

Mise, I am afraid I still don't agree with you, but I will make an effort to make everything as comprehensive and clear as necessary. I would appreciate it if you respected that and make room for the possibility that I may too have a point worth of consideration.

I know that this is commonly accepted as a fact, and I agree, but do you know actually of a single study that does control for socio-economic and at best also cultural factors and which shows the actual significance of race for success in life? I just looked on google for half an hour and did not find a thing (I could tell you though that even though black women die more often from breast cancer, race does not actually play a significant role ;)). To know the actual dimensions would probably be quit helpful, but I don't know where to take it from.
Well, let's take the example Deviate posted in the Tavern thread: http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873.pdf

In this case, they have strictly controlled for every variable. They are sending out 4 CVs to each company, randomly selected from 4 different "buckets" of CVs. The CVs get assigned random names, depending on whether they are in one of the "black" buckets or one of the "white" buckets, so the CVs themselves are necessarily and strictly uncorrelated with any other variable that is present on the CV. The only difference is the name*. The good thing about CVs is that it contains everything that is necessary to judge employment; put another way, a CV contains all possible factors that could influence an employers' willingness to give the candidate an interview. So we know for a fact that, once you randomise the names of the CVs, all other possible callback-influencing factors are controlled for completely.

Now, your objection in the Tavern thread, that employers are using "black names" as a proxy for socio-economic status (or education or work experience etc), is also controlled for: employers know the socio-economic status of the candidate, because it says so on the CV. Indeed, the researchers attempted to use the data to determine the level of "affluence-based" discrimination: employers judge candidates who come from affluent areas to be more employable (and therefore give more callbacks) than candidates who come from less affluent areas. And yet, the racial discrimination is still present: blacks still get fewer callbacks from whites, even when they both live in affluent neighbourhoods.

This study, incidentally, should be totally conclusive to you. All other variables are controlled for strictly; the CVs are randomly assigned "black" or "white" names, and since all other data relevant to employment is listed, there is nothing else to consider. The differences, which are statistically significant, show a marked difference between black and white sounding names. There's really no room for negotiation here - it was a remarkably well-designed experiment, that avoids the common pitfalls of other experiments (most notably, exactly what variables they should control for).

*-The other difference is that some CVs are given more experience, more education, etc than others, labelled as "High quality" CVs in the paper. So really the 4 buckets can be broken down as follows:

A1) White name + High quality CV
A2) White name + Low quality CV
B1) Black name + High quality CV
B2) Black name + Low quality CV

We would just be interested in A vs B. The other relationships, for example the callback rate between B1 and B2 vs A1 and A2 etc are also interesting, but they aren't really important for this discussion. We're really interested purely in the difference between buckets A and B.

luiz

May 18, 2012, 01:28 PM

That sounds interesting, but can you expand on that or show data or whatever? I am sure you can imagine that it is hard to just take your word for it.
Yeah, I'll try to come up with the studies I did myself.

In the meantime, you can Google the numerous writings on the topic by Thomas Sowell. He was the one to first demonstrate that things like growing up in a broken family matter far more than race, in fact making race statistically insignificant.

Well, let's take the example Deviate posted in the Tavern thread: http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873.pdf

In this case, they have strictly controlled for every variable. They are sending out 4 CVs to each company, randomly selected from 4 different "buckets" of CVs. The CVs get assigned random names, depending on whether they are in one of the "black" buckets or one of the "white" buckets, so the CVs themselves are necessarily and strictly uncorrelated with any other variable that is present on the CV. The only difference is the name*. The good thing about CVs is that it contains everything that is necessary to judge employment; put another way, a CV contains all possible factors that could influence an employers' willingness to give the candidate an interview. So we know for a fact that, once you randomise the names of the CVs, all other possible callback-influencing factors are controlled for completely.

Now, your objection in the Tavern thread, that employers are using "black names" as a proxy for socio-economic status (or education or work experience etc), is also controlled for: employers know the socio-economic status of the candidate, because it says so on the CV. Indeed, the researchers attempted to use the data to determine the level of "affluence-based" discrimination: employers judge candidates who come from affluent areas to be more employable (and therefore give more callbacks) than candidates who come from less affluent areas. And yet, the racial discrimination is still present: blacks still get fewer callbacks from whites, even when they both live in affluent neighbourhoods.

This study, incidentally, should be totally conclusive to you. All other variables are controlled for strictly; the CVs are randomly assigned "black" or "white" names, and since all other data relevant to employment is listed, there is nothing else to consider. The differences, which are statistically significant, show a marked difference between black and white sounding names. There's really no room for negotiation here - it was a remarkably well-designed experiment, that avoids the common pitfalls of other experiments (most notably, exactly what variables they should control for).

*-The other difference is that some CVs are given more experience, more education, etc than others, labelled as "High quality" CVs in the paper. So really the 4 buckets can be broken down as follows:

A1) White name + High quality CV
A2) White name + Low quality CV
B1) Black name + High quality CV
B2) Black name + Low quality CV

We would just be interested in A vs B. The other relationships, for example the callback rate between B1 and B2 vs A1 and A2 etc are also interesting, but they aren't really important for this discussion. We're really interested purely in the difference between buckets A and B.

Well, I have some objections to the study. They're comparing "normal white" names, like Emily and Greg, to poor, uneducated black names like Lakisha and Jamal. The paper's title uses those examples.

If you look at table 11, with all the names used, you'll see all "white names" are fairly normal while all "black names" are fairly bizarre. There was no "poor white" bizarre name used, like Cletus or Billy Bob. The fact that they failed to test the response to "poor white" names seems a bit damning to me. Their method to choose names, the "most uniquely white" and "most uniquely black" ones, is good to convey the race of the applicant to the employer, but fails at testing alternative hypothesis for discrimination. Also the fact that they only looked at babies born in Massachusetts and Chicago is a potential methodological flaw, as white poverty is mostly a rural phenomena and as such poor white names won't be found there in significant numbers, while poor black names will (black poverty is overwhelmingly urban). Would the study reach the same conclusions in Appalachia?

Fact is even if employers know the socio-economic background of the applicants, they can still infer stuff from the names, and I'm not talking race. If you take a Cletus and a Brad, both white and both with the same family income, I'm willing to bet the Brad will receive a better response to his sent CVs. To me it's fairly obvious that certain white names would also face discrimination.

Another weakness of their name-choosing method, which they admitted themselves, is that it does not represent the average names of Black Americans, who in general have much "less distinctive" names. So their names represent a particular sub-set of Black Americans, and that subset (a rather poor, uneducated subset) certainly faces discrimination also from non-racial factors. In other words, the conclusions cannot be extrapolated to all Black Americans.

At any rate, I would much prefer broader economic studies about salaries and credit access, using much larger data bases, to this rather limited and necessarily subjective social study.

So, was the study conclusive? I don't think so.

Mise

May 18, 2012, 01:39 PM

Again, as I said, they specifically looked at the socio-economic status of the candidates as well. I'll just quote what they say about it:

5.1 Potential Confounds

Though we have interpreted our results in terms of racial diﬀerences, we actually manipulate only the
name on the resume. While these names clearly signal race, perhaps they also signal some other personal
characteristics. More speciﬁcally, one might be concerned that employers are inferring social background
from the personal name. When employers read a name like “Tyrone” or “Latoya,” they may assume that the
person comes from a disadvantaged background. In the extreme form of this social background interpretation,
employers do not care at all about race but are discriminating only against the social background conveyed
by the names we have chosen.
47
While plausible, we feel that some of our earlier results are hard to reconcile with this interpretation.
For example, in Table 6, we found that while employers value “better” addresses, African Americans are
not helped more than Whites by living in Whiter or more educated neighborhoods. If the African American
names mainly signal negative social background, one might have expected the estimated name-gap to be
lower for the better addresses. Also, if the names mainly signal social background, one might have expected
the name gap to be higher for jobs that rely more on soft skills or require more inter-personal interactions.
We found no such evidence in Tables 6 or 7. (best viewed in original pdf format!)

They go on to acknowledge that the "black" names they chose were associated with below-average socio-economic backgrounds. However, they use their data to directly test whether names associated with below-average socio-economic backgrounds are correlated with low callback rates. They find no evidence of this; in fact, they find that the exact opposite is true, especially in the African Male category (which is the only statistically significant result):

But, more interestingly for us, there is substantial between-name heterogeneity in social background.
African American babies named Kenya or Jamal are aﬃliated with much higher mothers’ education than
African American babies named Latonya or Leroy. Conversely, White babies named Carrie or Neil have lower
social background than those named Emily or Geoﬀrey. This allows for a direct test of the social background
hypothesis within our sample: are names associated with a worse social background discriminated against
more? In the last row in each gender-race group, we report the rank-order correlation between callback
rates and mother’s education. The social background hypothesis predicts a positive correlation. Yet, for all
four categories, we ﬁnd the exact opposite. The p-values indicate that we cannot reject independence at
standard signiﬁcance levels except in the case of African American males where we can almost reject it at
the 10 percent level. In summary, this test suggests little evidence that social background drives the extent
of discrimination.

In other words:

If you take a Cletus and a Brad, both white and both with the same family income, I'm willing to bet the Brad will receive a better response to his sent CVs.

You would have lost this bet!

I find it very hard to criticise this paper in particular, which is why I'm keen to focus on it (:p). Economic research by the NBER is typically very rigorously conducted and tested, and this is no exception.

luiz

May 18, 2012, 01:40 PM

What would you think of a 1/32nd blood becoming Chief of a tribe?

If membership of the tribe is open to anyone who feels culturally associated to the tribe, I'd praise them.

If they require a certain "blood quota", be it 1/32 or 1/3200, I say damn them.

luiz

May 18, 2012, 01:53 PM

Again, as I said, they specifically looked at the socio-economic status of the candidates as well. I'll just quote what they say about it:

(best viewed in original pdf format!)

They go on to acknowledge that the "black" names they chose were associated with below-average socio-economic backgrounds. However, they use their data to directly test whether names associated with below-average socio-economic backgrounds are correlated with low callback rates. They find no evidence of this; in fact, they find that the exact opposite is true, especially in the African Male category (which is the only statistically significant result):

I find it very hard to criticise this paper in particular, which is why I'm keen to focus on it (:p). Economic research by the NBER is typically very rigorously conducted and tested, and this is no exception.

I'm finding stuff to criticize it. First, as I said, they are only testing their hypothesis for a particular subset of blacks, which does not represent the average at all. I don't see how those results can be freely extrapolated to all blacks.

Also, the way they tested the social hypothesis seems deeply flawed to me. While it may be true (if they so it surely is) that "Kenya or Jamal are aﬃliated with much higher mothers’ education than African American babies named Latonya or Leroy", that does not at all translate to popular perception! I don't think people differentiate at all between Jamal and Leroy, they're both "poor black names" as far as employers see it. They should have tested a black "Daniel" or "John" versus a black "Leroy" or "Tyrone", making sure the employers know their ethnicity. Or a white "Brad" vs a white "Cletus", as I suggested. Their conclusion that there is no discrimination based on signaling of social background by names is just wrong. I see people discriminated by names all the time (with no racial undertones), and I'm sure it happens everywhere. The fact of the matter is they did not test the social hypothesis at all.

So I would not have lost the bet, because that hypothesis was not tested. They tested a certain "less poor" black name vs a "more poor", assuming employers recognize the difference, which they most certainly don't.

Mise

May 18, 2012, 02:11 PM

I'm finding stuff to criticize it. First, as I said, they are only testing their hypothesis for a particular subset of blacks, which does not represent the average at all. I don't see how those results can be freely extrapolated to all blacks.

Also, the way they tested the social hypothesis seems deeply flawed to me. While it may be true (if they so it surely is) that "Kenya or Jamal are aﬃliated with much higher mothers’ education than African American babies named Latonya or Leroy", that does not at all translate to popular perception! I don't think people differentiate at all between Jamal and Leroy, they're both "poor black names" as far as employers see it. They should have tested a black "Daniel" or "John" versus a black "Leroy" or "Tyrone", making sure the employers know their ethnicity. Or a white "Brad" vs a white "Cletus", as I suggested. Their conclusion that there is no discrimination based on signaling of social background by names is just wrong. I see people discriminated by names all the time (with no racial undertones), and I'm sure it happens everywhere. The fact of the matter is they did not test the social hypothesis at all.

So I would not have lost the bet, because that hypothesis was not tested. They tested a certain "less poor" black name vs a "more poor", assuming employers recognize the difference, which they most certainly don't.
Well, I couldn't disagree more... Even if there are differences between popular perception of the socioeconomic status of certain names and the reality of what those names actually correlate with, the fact that they find the exact opposite of what your theory suggests is pretty damning to your theory, IMO...

In any case, the fact that, on a black candidate's application, the only thing that matters was his name* is surely evidence that people are so god damn awful at judging the ability of a candidate that preserving the process of judging the ability of a candidate by his CV is of questionable value in the first place. If the only thing that matters on a CV with the name "Jamal" or "Cletus" on the top is his name, then surely, following SiLL's original logic, we should be assigning quotas to companies based on the name "Jamal", "Cletus", etc, rather than race. Would you accept that as a solution? I don't think you would, but that's the conclusion you're drawing, isn't it?

*-Table 5. Actually, "special skills" was also significant, but only by a tiny amount.

luiz

May 18, 2012, 02:41 PM

But the thing is, they did not test the hypothesis that a black with a "normal" name would do better than a black with an "uniquely black name" (in reality, a poor name). What they did was to select some of the "uniquely black names" that correlated with better socio-economic status and tested against some that correlated with worse. That says nothing of my hypothesis, it wasn't tested at all. The result of their test was almost certainly spurious.

Here's what I would like to see tested, but wasn't:

-A poor white name versus a "normal white name": say, Cletus vs. Brad.
-A poor name versus a "normal name", while informing that both applicants are black: say, Jamal vs. John.

I'll insist once again: this study was only about a certain sub-set of the black population, which does not represent the average at all, and I don't see how those results can be freely extrapolated to all blacks.

And no, my solution would not be adopting quotas for people with poor names. I don't think we should adopt quotas at all; if we had to adopt them for all characteristics that correlate negativity with job prospects, we would have to adopt quotas for short people, ugly people, etc.

It's a fact that people discriminate on names all the time, and I think parents should think of that.

I don't have (and don't think we should pursue) any solution (other than parents thinking for a couple of minutes before choosing a name). I abhor the notion that we should create policies to counteract every social correlation we observe.

Mise

May 18, 2012, 03:12 PM

SiLL

May 18, 2012, 03:39 PM

I'll post a thorough reply later, but I wanted to say that it is perfectly normal that names which sound poor are discriminated against for no other reason than that they sound poor. You'll have this in any other country of the world. This may sound like a thing too irrational to be true, but that's how people work. You don't actually need a conscious ill intend for that. To illustrate: Beautiful women are similarly discriminated against because women often take care of the admission process and will instinctively tend to rule out beautiful women because they instinctively perceive them as rivals. While beautiful men score.
Likewise, a poor name will at least on the level of the sub-conscious trigger negative impressions. And that is what exotic black people names appear to be: poor people names.
Society is full such dynamics and if we want know how it really matters that someone is black, we need to account for them.

Mise

May 18, 2012, 04:06 PM

So there is discrimination based on:
- attractiveness
- "poor-sounding" names
- height
- gender
- baldness
- accents
- acne
- speech impediments
- clothing
- sports ability
- musical ability

But there cannot possibly be discrimination based on:
- race

:confused:

SiLL

May 18, 2012, 04:33 PM

Jesus Christ, what the hell is this?!

This was about the merits of this particular study and nothing more. I hate to pull it, but straw man much? Can you not just accept that your line of thought was flawed, do you need to move to such a dubious attack right ahead? I know that this kind of debating style may be entertaining or whatever, but it is also freaking indecent and unproductive.

Mise

May 18, 2012, 04:52 PM

Err, maybe you should calm down...

You were saying that the discrimination could be a result of poor people's names being used, rather than black people's names being used. I'm asking why you seem to believe that. I asked luiz for evidence that employers actively discriminate against poor people; you respond by saying "it is perfectly normal that names which sound poor are discriminated against for no other reason than that they sound poor". Well, why can't I just say "it is perfectly normal that names which sound black are discriminated against for no other reason than that they sound black"? That's not evidence, that's merely a restatement of your assumption that poor-sounding names are more important than black-sounding names in the employers' discrimination process. You seem so quick to conclude that employers can be prejudiced against pretty girls, and that this is a crucial confounding variable. But you and luiz both seem unwilling to accept that employers can be prejudiced against black people at all, since you believe that any discrimination based on race can be ruled out by looking at socioeconomic variables instead.

I mean, your entire argument rests on the assumption that all differences in hiring decisions are due to the socioeconomic background of the candidate, and are not attributable to race. So what am I supposed to conclude? The only logical way that this could possibly be true is if employers never discriminated on race, but really discriminated on socioeconomic background instead. And, since this is what you asserted directly above, I don't see why you're getting upset about me repeating it in my own words.

uppi

May 19, 2012, 12:07 PM

The only thing this study shows is that there is discrimination based on names. It has been shown that this also happens, when "race" is not an issue. A while ago, I read about a study that showed that teachers grade essays of children differently depending on whether the name of the child is favorable or unfavorable. And in that study the unfavorable names where not linked to ethnicity or "race".

The study discussed here fails to provide evidence for the source of the stereotypes. Although it might be possible that the discrimination happened, because the names were associated with black people, it is also possible that the socioeconomic association or something else was the deciding factor. As the latter has been shown to occur, we cannot assume the former without further evidence.

So the study is ill suited to show that discrimination happens based solely on skin color.

luiz

May 19, 2012, 12:43 PM

Yes, I understand that that's what you want tested, and I understand that this wasn't tested. As you say, the "black" names are biased toward the low end of the socioeconomic spectrum. But what are you actually saying here? That employers are thinking:

1) "Jamal" is on the low end of the socio-economic spectrum
2) People on the low end of the socio-economic spectrum usually have poor qualifications and weak employment histories
3) I don't want someone with poor qualifications and weak a employment history to work for me
4) I won't hire anyone named "Jamal"

But the employer already has Jamal's CV right in front of him, staring him in the face. To see his qualifications, he has to look 10cm down the page. To see his employment history, he has to look 20cm down the page. Hell, to see his socioeconomic background, they only have to look at the 2nd line underneath his name: his address! Are you trying to tell me that employers, as a group, are so stupid and lazy that they won't even read a candidate's CV to find out what their actual education or work experience is? That they would, instead, make a series of assumptions and leaps of faith, rather than glancing down a few inches to find out the facts?

Look, if employers always chose candidates based exclusively on CVs we would not be having this discussion, because there wouldn't even be the hypothesis of racial discrimination. What you seem to be saying is that employers will act with perfect rationality when choosing a candidate, except if the candidate happens to be black. What I'm saying is that there all sorts of "non-technical" issues that are taken into consideration, due to a number of factors, such as names, appearance, voice tone, etc. What I'm saying is that this study did not demonstrate its goal, which is that racial discrimination is playing a big role. How could it, if it's focused on a narrow subset of the black population?

If that's what you're saying, then why on earth are you so desperate to preserve this crazy, illogical and economically inefficient method of allocating labour? Surely we need a better way. Perhaps points-based AA is merely ironing out the inefficiencies in the way we allocate labour.

I don't view it as a "system of labor allocation", I view at as people hiring who they like. I don't think it's possible to create a system of labor allocation.

Furthermore, I think bringing race into everything is counterproductive and perpetuates racism instead of fighting it. I also think that awarding a few extra points to people based on their race will only help the already most succesful elements of that race, to the expense of others who are blameless of whatever ill is trying to be corrected. It's a counterproductive, racialist piece of social engineering that can produce no good.

And no, I don't expect you to agree with this solution. But if you want me to believe that employers completely ignore what's written in front of them in Jamal's actual CV and instead concoct a fictional, stereotypical view of what someone with the same socioeconomic background as "Jamal" may hypothetically have on his CV in their own heads, then I do expect you to come up with some evidence for it. Because I simply don't have such a dim view of business owners as you ;) In short, I don't find your theory, that employers aren't racist, but merely stupid, lazy, and prejudiced in a slightly less reprehensible way, as evidence that we should ditch AA. On the contrary, we need to ramp it up!
Did you know that a person's height is also correlated with job prospects and income?

Anyway, here's what really happens: it's not that the employer will ignore whatever is on Jamal's CV and focus on his name. It's just that his name will essentially be a negative point in his CV, because it's associated with coming from a poor household, with parents who probably didn't emphasize education all that much. So the employer could still hire Jamal, but will prefer an alternative if a viable alternative exists.

I don't think we can, or should, create social engineering solutions for all possible sub-conscious associations that might interfer with choosing a candidate.

Formaldehyde

May 19, 2012, 09:37 PM

My brother, like my father and grandfather, is named after Andrew Jackson because my great great great grandmother was his niece. As a result, many people think he is black when he shows up for job interviews. Who knows how many decided not to interview him on that basis alone.

Mise

May 20, 2012, 06:13 AM

What I'm saying is that there all sorts of "non-technical" issues that are taken into consideration, due to a number of factors, such as names, appearance, voice tone, etc.

<...>

Did you know that a person's height is also correlated with job prospects and income?

Anyway, here's what really happens: it's not that the employer will ignore whatever is on Jamal's CV and focus on his name. It's just that his name will essentially be a negative point in his CV, because it's associated with coming from a poor household, with parents who probably didn't emphasize education all that much. So the employer could still hire Jamal, but will prefer an alternative if a viable alternative exists.

Ahh, it's so clear to me now! What really happens isn't that some employers are racist -- of course not! Instead, they are "name-ist", poverty-ist, height-ist, bald-ist, accent-ist and so on - but not racist. Why, racism is the very last thing that could possibly explain those results...

This is exactly the problem - you are so quick to assume that it is merely the "poverty" of the name, and not the "blackness" of the name. You can accept that discrimination based on attractiveness, "poor-sounding" names, height, gender, baldness, accents, acne, speech impediments, clothing, sports ability, musical ability and so on exist and are the cause of any difficulty that "Jamal" faces when he tries to enter the labour market. But you can't accept from this data, or from the myriad other sets of data, that discrimination based on race is the cause.

As I said before, the difficulty in social studies is that there are always confounds that critics can pick out and use to undermine the broader conclusions of the report. You look at this study and criticise the names that they chose -- Jamal, Tyone and Latoya aren't "black" names at all, they're just "poor" names. You could look at other audit studies, in which real people with the same relevant backgrounds, but one is black and one is white, are sent to interviews, apply for health services, sent to banks to apply for credit, and so on. But you would point out that the bank tellers/employers/etc "merely" assumed that black people are poorer and thus are less appropriate for the job or for credit, whereas white people are on average richer and so the perception that they are richer, better educated, etc is responsible for white candidates having an easier time getting jobs and credit. Leaving aside for a moment that this is pretty much the definition of prejudice and racial discrimination, I'm sure you could do this for every audit study and controlled experiment ever conducted -- they don't control for the myriad other differences between candidates (e.g. height), nor do they rule out that the prejudice is not based on race, but on the perception among interviewers (despite all evidence presented to the interviewer about the socioeconmic background of the specific candidate) that race is a good indicator of socioeconomic background, or some other variable that you think is more important.

You could move on to statistical studies, which show that, controlling for confounding variables A through W, black men have less access to employment than white men -- but point out that confounds X, Y and Z were not controlled for and are, of course, the true source of the difference. I could show you another study, which controls for A through M and R through Z -- which you would of course criticise for not controlling for N through P (and I would have to admit that methodological differences and statistical rigour preclude joining the two studies to crudely conclude that they jointly cover all controls). I could show you a dozen more statistical studies, which, as is natural in social studies, can't control for every confounding variable -- and you would of course conclude that the real source of discrimination is one of the variables that wasn't controlled for.

You could continue to do this for every single study on racial discrimination ever produced. And you could do it for every single study on racial discrimination that ever will be produced. You could dedicate your life to pointing out the flaws and oversights and confounds and biases in every racial discrimination study there is. You could even conduct your own studies (replete with their own flaws and oversights and confounds and biases), that show that racism doesn't exist, and nobody ever uses race to eliminate potential candidates from hiring decisions. Hell, you could even join one of the many well-funded "think tanks" and other organisations that exist solely to spread FUD over the issue of race, just as they exist for every issue from global warming to the holocaust to globalisation.

But at some point, you have to ask yourself: isn't it simply more likely that racism is still an issue in the West? That "some employers discriminate based on race" is the hypothesis with the greater explanatory power? The one single hypothesis that can explain all those studies?

At some point, you just have to think, "maybe black people do face problems that I don't face...".

luiz

May 20, 2012, 12:08 PM

Mise, you misunderstood me.

I don't disagree that the possibility that black people face discrimination in the job market and elsewhere is a very big one. I disagree that this and analogous studies have been able to measure it (or even demonstrate it), I disagree that it is a determining factor and, above all, I disagree with proposed remedies. I have here focused on criticising this study, and many other similar and worse studies, that usually assume that because black wages are in average lower than white wages, racial discrimination was proven. That sort of logic is an insult to anyone with a brain. But there are many other objections far beyond questioning the validity of the studies (which are valid questionings!).

Race-based policies are a serious business, that can and do generate collateral effects, and necessarily produce injustices and distortions. To justify the implementation of race-based policies, policy-makers would have to:

a) Prove that racial discrimination exists and is significant;
b) Reasonably quantify it;
c) Prove that the positive effects of the race-based policies would outweight the negative ones.

We're stuck at "a". Even if, for the sake of the argument, we are to assume that racial discrimination is significant and more serious than other kinds of discrimination (which do exist and are easier to demonstrate), then we would still have to prove that race-based AA is worth the cost. And this will never happen, because it clearly isn't.

Lets think for a moment about the effects of a point-based, racial AA system, on say universities and civil service. What are the effects? Clearly, the poorest segment of the black population won't benefit at all, as a few extra points won't make them competitive. The most talented segment of the population won't need it either, because they already get accepted to whatever they want. The benefit will fall upon a competitive segment, that was left out by a few points. So this small segment will get in at the expense of an equally small, and marginally more qualified, non-black segment. This will have absolutely no effect on the most vulnerable segments, and will in no way lead to less racism. On the contrary, the only tangible effect here is an injustice against the non-black segment that was left out by a few unearned points, which can only lead to resentment.

Racial-AA was never supposed to end racism. If we think for a sencond about it, we see that indeed it can't. It was based on the evil idea that the "oppressed races" must have their "elite leaders", which will in turn help "their people" advance. That's of course total garbage; races don't have leaders and nobody needs them to advance. At any rate, there already is a black elite in the US and in all countries with a sizeable black population.

Any rigorous analysis of race-based policies will conclude they are a failure. Several minority groups, which in the not-so-distant past faced harsh discrimination, were able to reach if not surpass the majority level of prosperity without any racial bonus.

So why should we adopt a system that furthers the division of society on races, necessarily leads to injustices, fuels racial resentment and an idea of "racial struggle", has failed on a global scale and is on top of all unnecessary?

Mise

May 20, 2012, 02:05 PM

I wonder why you don't apply the same level of healthy scepticism to your own assertions... "What are the effects?" Well, you make some claims, but where's the evidence for that? On the contrary, I remember reading a report by the Department for Work and Pensions a few years ago saying that large companies with HR policies designed to level the playing field on race didn't show any bias in recruiting when tested for racial discrimination, but companies with no HR policies on race did show bias in their recruitment... It doesn't seem at all far fetched that HR policies designed to ensure that recruitment managers ignore race do, in fact, result in recruitment managers ignoring race. I don't see how this (and I'm sure if I could be bothered to google it, I'd find other studies reporting similar things) is consistent with your belief that all race-based policies are unmitigated failures. Perhaps there is no analysis rigorous enough to satisfy you...

luiz

May 20, 2012, 02:25 PM

Instructing HR recruiters to ignore race seems pretty good to me... it's not a race-based policy, it's the negation of a race-based policy.

Assigning an arbitrary number of extra points for people arbitrarily classified as a certain race, OTOH, sounds like a terrible idea.

Mise

May 20, 2012, 03:00 PM

Millman

May 20, 2012, 03:14 PM

Did you ever consider asking around to determine who the company is most likely to hire. You should also ask for a tour of the company before you apply there to see their dress attire and what they look like.

And I'm not posting out of ignorance. What could help your situation is a gov. credit score. In fact there's nothing in the constitution that prohibitis this. Actually, the 'due process' clause would encourage such a thing.

It could determine how well you act as a citizen and/or determine if the authorities are judging you fairly/unfairly.

We don't pour billions of $ into science for no reasong. ;)

luiz

May 20, 2012, 03:58 PM

But your objections would still be relevant for policies that ensure that recruiters ignore race... The poorest segment won't be helped at all, just as before, and the policy still won't reduce racism -- as you claimed earlier, people still associate black names with being less suitable for employment, in spite of the evidence presented 10cm under their noses. It's also far from a universal solution - how do you do it in organisations or companies where the person's first and only interaction is face-to-face?

Finally, the idea that a white person who is "marginally more qualified" will be left out is pure fiction. There is simply no such thing as "marginally more qualified". How do you even measure what "marginally more qualified" means? The error margin on whatever metric you use is going to envelop pretty much everyone who falls short of entry - black, white, gay, female, everyone. No two candidates are ever identical apart from one thing - candidates can be different on any number of criteria that "pretty much balance out" in the end. As JR said in the other thread, when you get two people who are pretty much as qualified and suitable for a position as each other, you use your discretion. Instead of saying, "well, I may as well pick the one who supports the same football team as me", they say, "well, I may as well help even out our statistics on ethnic diversity". Whether or not you agree that evening out the organisation's statistics on ethnic diversity is a valid goal, you must admit that it is no less valid than picking someone who happened to support Arsenal.

But a hiring policy is not supposed to cure racism! It can't and it won't.

And while it's true that for regular jobs there may be no such thing as "marginally more qualified", for universities or civil service, usually objective criteria are employed, and therefore there is such thing as marginally more qualified. In Brazil, all admissions for universities and civil service are exclusively based on test scores, and the people correcting the tests don't know the name or identity of the person who took the tests, so there can be no discrimination of any kind. Or rather, there wans't, until they imposed racial quotas. Now more qualified candidates are rejected because of the color of their skin all the time, sometimes even when they scored nearly twice as much as someone who got in through a quota.

Finally, if a private company wants to institute an "eskimo-only" hiring policy, that's fine with me (I don't think it's fine, but I don't think they shouldn't be able to do it either). What I don't want is the government imposing racial classifications down society's throat, and arbitrating different values and points for the "different races".

warpus

May 20, 2012, 04:15 PM

Cutlass

May 20, 2012, 04:30 PM

I agree.

Do it based on socioeconomic status, or don't do it at all.

That doesn't solve the problem though. The problem is at heart racism and racial discrimination. If you have policies based solely on socioeconomic status, then you do not address the problems blacks face for no other reason than that they are black.

warpus

May 20, 2012, 07:04 PM

That doesn't solve the problem though. The problem is at heart racism and racial discrimination. If you have policies based solely on socioeconomic status, then you do not address the problems blacks face for no other reason than that they are black.

You can't change racist attitudes by institutional racism; it will only make things worse.

If the problem you're trying to solve is racism, the only solution is really better socio-economic mobility, better access to quality education, and time.

AA as it is now provides better socio-economic mobility but it draws more lines between the "races".. So it takes a step forward, but one backwards. My solution is a step forward.. It doesn't address racism - but it doesn't make it worse either.

Cutlass

May 20, 2012, 07:21 PM

You can't change racist attitudes by institutional racism; it will only make things worse.

If the problem you're trying to solve is racism, the only solution is really better socio-economic mobility, better access to quality education, and time.

AA as it is now provides better socio-economic mobility but it draws more lines between the "races".. So it takes a step forward, but one backwards. My solution is a step forward.. It doesn't address racism - but it doesn't make it worse either.

It is a strawman, not a reality, to claim that it institutionalizes racism. It does nothing of the sort. It is a strawman to claim that it is reverse racism. It is not racism in any way, shape, or form. These things are not real. These things are rhetorical devices to gain control of the debate for the purpose of continuing the policies of racial segregation.

What ends racism is for people to know one another, to live near each other, to work and play together, to be a part of the same community, and so the people realize that everyone really is alike. And the only way to get there is to forcibly put an end to the racially based segregation of jobs, living accommodations, and education that keep people apart in all other aspects of their lives. So long as the policies are continuing the segregation, then the racism will persist. They are 2 sides of the same coin.

Now AA is an ugly way of addressing this, and for the most part AA has only ever been used very weakly in the US. But it does address the core of the issue, which is integration. Separate but equal is never equal. Racism will not end so long as people can get away with forcing segregation.

What you have to understand is that people are now treated unequally. None of these policies have ever, or will ever, give black people superior opportunities or access than white people. It is just another strawman to make that claim. All AA has ever done or tried to do is give equal access so that people can try to get equal results.

A socioeconomic based set of preferences will benefit whites more than blacks. And so it will not solve the core problem, which is that blacks are still somewhat segregated.

By segregating out certain peoples, what is accomplished is to reduce the competition for the better opportunities. And by doing that, inferior people can rise to the top easier. End segregation, end racism, and only then can the best people for any given job be the ones who get the jobs. Only then do we have a meritocracy. Only then do we get the maximum economic potential of all people.

innonimatu

May 20, 2012, 07:24 PM

Unsurprising, I'm with Luiz on the issue of racism and "affirmative action" again. The underlying problem, whenever I see this AA stuff, always turns out to be socioeconomic, and not one of skin color. Selectively giving benefits to particular groups based on race will only make others resentful and create racism, because AA is itself a racist policy!

So, target the entire socioeconomically disadvantaged group for help. This is probably where I'll radically depart from Luiz's stance. Even within the present capitalist system I think that merely increasing again spending on social programs, including free and inclusive education (same funding to all schools, no socioeconomic discrimination meaning possibly no independent private schools until the problem is solved), and financing it all with a very progressive income tax structure as it happened in the past, is the simplest policy to address this problem with some effectiveness. The "social-democratic solution", if you will.
And not just education for the children, but higher incomes to their families too: if you want to turn poor people into "middle-class people", start by letting them have all the middle-class toys... meaning both creating jobs and forcing a higher minimum wage, even if those jobs and not economically "profitable" (they don't have to be "unproductive" jobs, mind you, just jobs doing stuff that could be imported cheaper, for example, or not allowing companies to squeeze their workers for profits so much), or distributing some form of "minimum income" to them. If everything went right their children would then have a better environment to grow up in, better success in their careers, and the need for jobs policies or subsidies would be reduced.

innonimatu

May 20, 2012, 07:36 PM

It is a strawman, not a reality, to claim that it institutionalizes racism. It does nothing of the sort. It is a strawman to claim that it is reverse racism. It is not racism in any way, shape, or form. These things are not real. These things are rhetorical devices to gain control of the debate for the purpose of continuing the policies of racial segregation.

What ends racism is for people to know one another, to live near each other, to work and play together, to be a part of the same community, and so the people realize that everyone really is alike. And the only way to get there is to forcibly put an end to the racially based segregation of jobs, living accommodations, and education that keep people apart in all other aspects of their lives. So long as the policies are continuing the segregation, then the racism will persist. They are 2 sides of the same coin.

But they are not alike! You are missing the crux of the issue: they are different because they come from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Not because they have different skin colors, or different remote ancestries. Those people are not like Eddie Murphy in "Trading Places" (damn, I'm showing how old I am!), they have different skills and life strategies because they have lived in different environments and adaptation cannot be forced overnight. Put them together by force and what will come out immediately is not their similarity, but their differences! And, because life is more tragedy than comedy, resentment from the "betters" against the "disadvantaged" they're being forced to work with. And against "affirmative action". You're preparing ground that will be ripe for the development of racism!
At the same time you also get resentment among the "disadvantaged", because the white poor rednecks see the poor blacks (for example) getting advantages over them opportunities they don't get.

Great policy indeed: you manage to screw up things at both ends! It indeed there is racism, and not just socioeconomic discrimination, then this racial affirmative action may have a use. Otherwise it is only a way to create racism. It doesn't even alleviate the real problem of socioeconomic discrimination, because you'll be deliberately lifting some people (based on racial criteria) and letting others fall down to take their places - the economic structure, income distribution among the population, etc doesn't get changed, only some places of some individuals are traded!

Mise

May 21, 2012, 02:42 AM

They're not different at all. But they are treated differently because they have different skin colours... If you're trying to argue that black people aren't treated differently because of their skin colour, then, well, I don't know what to say to you. Racism still exists, and is still a problem. Whether or not you agree with the solution, you can't have this discussion if you don't even agree that there is a problem.

But a hiring policy is not supposed to cure racism! It can't and it won't.
So why do you object to AA on the grounds that it won't cure racism then :confused: If it can't and won't cure racism -- and in fact, it's not supposed to cure racism -- then what does it matter that it doesn't, in fact, cure racism?

I don't think anyone ever claimed that AA was supposed to "cure racism"... That's just something you've ascribed to the policy in order to criticise it. But, as you've admitted, it can be ascribed to any hiring policy... The intent of AA is simply to level the playing field between candidates of different races.

And while it's true that for regular jobs there may be no such thing as "marginally more qualified", for universities or civil service, usually objective criteria are employed, and therefore there is such thing as marginally more qualified. In Brazil, all admissions for universities and civil service are exclusively based on test scores, and the people correcting the tests don't know the name or identity of the person who took the tests, so there can be no discrimination of any kind. Or rather, there wans't, until they imposed racial quotas. Now more qualified candidates are rejected because of the color of their skin all the time, sometimes even when they scored nearly twice as much as someone who got in through a quota.
So a candidate with 1001 points on a test is "objectively more qualified" than a candidate with 999 points on a test? That's absurd - surely you can see that the error margin in that metric absolutely dwarfs the true difference between the candidates? Nobody can claim that they have an "objective criteria" for employment or university admission, because whatever metric you use absolutely cannot differentiate candidates with such marginal scores on a test. The test itself is fundamentally incapable of differentiating between a bright and promising academic and a guy who crammed for 20 hours a day but has no idea what any of it means, and this is especially true at the undergraduate level. And if, in one year, the test is unusually easy, or there are an unusually high number of bright people in that graduating year, someone could get 20% higher than someone in the previous year and not be admitted, due to nothing more than being born in 1994 instead of 1993. If you have a cold on test day, that could knock 4-5% off your test score (it has to me in the past, I'm sure it's happened to you, too). Is it at all fair to dismiss a marginal candidate because he had the bad luck to be sick on test day?

Brazilian universities might be stupid enough to admit solely based on test scores, but the top universities and business schools in this country aren't. And AFAIK they aren't in America either; universities in America and Britain take a holistic approach to admissions, judging candidates by a broad and subjective range of criteria, instead of the narrow and antiquated focus on a score on a test (a system, incidentally, that we know was historically designed to favour candidates from a higher SES). If universities are solely using test scores as a criteria for entry, then they are no better than admitting marginal candidates based on what football team they support. A 0.5% difference on a test isn't a compelling reason to admit candidate A over candidate B: both candidates are equally qualified.

Of course, you will argue that the line has to be drawn somewhere, and this line will necessarily be arbitrary and unfair to marginal candidates who had a cold on test day. Fine, I agree with that. But I'm not the one who's arguing against AA on the basis that it is arbitrary and unfair to marginal candidates.

luiz

May 21, 2012, 07:04 AM

So why do you object to AA on the grounds that it won't cure racism then :confused: If it can't and won't cure racism -- and in fact, it's not supposed to cure racism -- then what does it matter that it doesn't, in fact, cure racism?

I don't think anyone ever claimed that AA was supposed to "cure racism"... That's just something you've ascribed to the policy in order to criticise it. But, as you've admitted, it can be ascribed to any hiring policy... The intent of AA is simply to level the playing field between candidates of different races.

I wasn't criticizing AA for failing to cure racism, as that is indeed not its goal. I was just pointing out that not only is AA powerless to cure racism, it is likely to make it worse. And many people do believe, bizarrely, that AA is an instrument to cure racism.

I was criticizing AA for officializing racial divisions, for assigning arbitrary bonuses to people arbitrarily classified as a certain race, for benefiting better-of members of a "race" at the expense of people from another "race" that are blameless of whatever problem is trying to be corrected, and for generally being a huge failure worldwide.

So a candidate with 1001 points on a test is "objectively more qualified" than a candidate with 999 points on a test? That's absurd - surely you can see that the error margin in that metric absolutely dwarfs the true difference between the candidates? Nobody can claim that they have an "objective criteria" for employment or university admission, because whatever metric you use absolutely cannot differentiate candidates with such marginal scores on a test. The test itself is fundamentally incapable of differentiating between a bright and promising academic and a guy who crammed for 20 hours a day but has no idea what any of it means, and this is especially true at the undergraduate level. And if, in one year, the test is unusually easy, or there are an unusually high number of bright people in that graduating year, someone could get 20% higher than someone in the previous year and not be admitted, due to nothing more than being born in 1994 instead of 1993. If you have a cold on test day, that could knock 4-5% off your test score (it has to me in the past, I'm sure it's happened to you, too). Is it at all fair to dismiss a marginal candidate because he had the bad luck to be sick on test day?

Modern admission tests are designed to be more about logic and general intellectual skills than memory. So a guy who crammed 20 hours a day won't beat a bright academic, if he isn't bright himself.

That said, of course there is an "error margin", and of course it's impossible to perfectly rank candidates. But here's the thing, when you adopt an objective, impersonal criteria like test scores, you are treating everyone equally. Everyone can catch a cold or a have a bad day, poor and rich and black and white alike. Everyone can study hard to overcome their own intellectual limitations. When you assign an arbitrary bonus for people arbitrarily classified as being of a certain race, you destroy that equality. How the hell can we reach the conclusion that being "black" (whatever the hell that means) is worth 5 or 10 extra points? How can you equate being black with getting a couple of questions right? How is that fair, or even logical?

It's not only unfair but thoroughly stupid.

Brazilian universities might be stupid enough to admit solely based on test scores, but the top universities and business schools in this country aren't. And AFAIK they aren't in America either; universities in America and Britain take a holistic approach to admissions, judging candidates by a broad and subjective range of criteria, instead of the narrow and antiquated focus on a score on a test (a system, incidentally, that we know was historically designed to favour candidates from a higher SES).

It's the other way around, obviously. When decades ago Brazilian universities used a "holistic" approach based on "subjective criteria", they were accused of favoring the upper classes. College professors come from the upper classes and as such could be inclined to benefit those like them, who live next to them and go to school with their kids. And this of course did happen, universities were essentially a country club for the graduates of a handful of elite schools. So the government imposed an impersonal system, based exclusively on the scores of many tests, taken at multiple and spread out days (so if you have one bad day or a cold your chances aren't ruined), where the people correcting the tests don't know the name or background of the person who took the test. The result was a great democratization of university access, finally bright people from a poor background could get in, even if obviously they still had a big disadvantage of coming from crappy public schools. The same system applies for all the civil service, so no discrimination happens or is even possible.

It's a completely color-blind, wealth-blind system. But the racialists still saw the need to create racial quotas.

If universities are solely using test scores as a criteria for entry, then they are no better than admitting marginal candidates based on what football team they support. A 0.5% difference on a test isn't a compelling reason to admit candidate A over candidate B: both candidates are equally qualified.

Of course, you will argue that the line has to be drawn somewhere, and this line will necessarily be arbitrary and unfair to marginal candidates who had a cold on test day. Fine, I agree with that. But I'm not the one who's arguing against AA on the basis that it is arbitrary and unfair to marginal candidates.

The difference is one system is fair and the other isn't. It's one thing to be passed over because a guy was a littler bit better than you at a test. Everyone accepts that as fair. In school the difference between failing a year and advancing can be a 1% test score. The difference between legally drinking and not can be 1 day. You always have to draw the line, and it's much better to draw it over objective, equal for everyone criteria than idiotic divisive and subjective garbage like skin color.

So lets recap all the arguments against race-based AA:

- It officializes racial divisions;
- It leads to a notion of "racial struggle" and fuels racial resentment (and thus racism);
- The classification of people by race is necessarily arbitrary, inaccurate and unfair;
- The benefit assigned for belonging to a certain race is necessarily arbitrary and unfair;
- It leads to blameless people being harmed;
- It overwhelmingly benefits the privileged segment of a "race" (who don't need help to being with) and does nothing to help the poorer segments;
- It is a failure on a global scale;
- It is unnecessary (see: minorities who were previously harshly discriminated against reaching or surpassing majority levels of prosperity without AA. See: blacks of recent African immigrant origin outperforming whites at university admissions).

And the benefits of race-based AA are... uh... yeah.

Cutlass

May 21, 2012, 07:35 AM

But they are not alike! You are missing the crux of the issue: they are different because they come from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Not because they have different skin colors, or different remote ancestries. Those people are not like Eddie Murphy in "Trading Places" (damn, I'm showing how old I am!), they have different skills and life strategies because they have lived in different environments and adaptation cannot be forced overnight. Put them together by force and what will come out immediately is not their similarity, but their differences! And, because life is more tragedy than comedy, resentment from the "betters" against the "disadvantaged" they're being forced to work with. And against "affirmative action". You're preparing ground that will be ripe for the development of racism!
At the same time you also get resentment among the "disadvantaged", because the white poor rednecks see the poor blacks (for example) getting advantages over them opportunities they don't get.

Great policy indeed: you manage to screw up things at both ends! It indeed there is racism, and not just socioeconomic discrimination, then this racial affirmative action may have a use. Otherwise it is only a way to create racism. It doesn't even alleviate the real problem of socioeconomic discrimination, because you'll be deliberately lifting some people (based on racial criteria) and letting others fall down to take their places - the economic structure, income distribution among the population, etc doesn't get changed, only some places of some individuals are traded!

Except that they fundamentally are alike. The cultural differences come from the segregation, not from any differences of the people. Something like 1/3 of black Americans have overcome the segregation and live lives fundamentally indistinguishable from the lives of white Americans. Except that they are still targeted for racism in employment and law enforcement. There isn't anything different about these people.

They are only different when they are held segregated. It is a cultural artifact of the policies that are intended to prevent blacks from having full equality. Individuals can and do overcome it every day. If we could only end those external pressures that are the root causes of the difference, then it wouldn't be long before the socioeconomic status of all blacks was roughly similar to that of all whites.

SiLL

May 21, 2012, 12:58 PM

I think this discussion needs some systematization. I'll have a go at it on the way through my post.

@Mise
I in my last post was so agitated because the direct point of discussion at this point was not if there is racism in its own right (even though luiz earlier claimed that the effect of racism was no statistically significant on success in life). It was if the study of yours can actually prove so. And - for the reasons which have already been explained to death - it can't. And that is just an objective fact.

That it can also not rule out that racism occurs is an entirely different matter.

But you to me seemed to be absolutely unwilling to accept this basic fact, but instead preferred to put assumptions about the implications of this fact in my mouth (but supposedly without intending, so I apologize for this accusation). The assumption that there was no racism in its own right, which I have never made, or at least never intended to make. I merely wondered about the actual significant of racism when socio-economic factors are controlled for, because if known, this without a doubt will be of strong importance.

But to get back to the actual original debate - the merits of racial AA - then the mere notion that racism somehow plays a role in the destiny of minority races can IMO not possibly be enough to justify AA. Actually, scrap the IMO. I am sure we can also establish that as another fact. For the simple reason, that AA does has undesired effects. Which means, that to justify AA, it is not only enough to establish that there is somehow racism beyond socio-economic factors (which again I don't question), it is not only enough to establish that AA somehow softens the effect of this racism, it must also be established that the extend to which AA does so weights greater than the extend of AA's undesired effects. And this is what I base my argument on.

Which then compromised goes like this:
- It is entirely based on chance if AA does actually help a person to a smaller or equal extend than to which he or she actually was hindered by racism, or if it gives such an individual simply an unfair advantage. Which means: It is a shot in the dark.
- As luiz does not get tired to state: AA is predesignated to help this share of a race which requires it the least, because it naturally can only benefit those which already without AA have some sort of perspective for whatever they are applying. Which means: It is not only a shot in the dark, it is a short in the dark which is aimed at where it is needed the least.
- At the same time, people of other races, be it a majority race like whites or as the USA proves a minority race like Asian, suffer for it. Which means: It backfires, and the people taking the hit - unless you got lucky and hit a racist - don't deserve it.
- And at last, what makes AA necessary in the first place, racism, is quit potentially fueled by this policy of racial discrimination. Which means: AA helps the source of the evil it intends to fight.

In conclusion: AA is a shot in the dark, that aims at the wrong direction, backfires at noninvolved and alleviates the underlying issue.

And that is why I strongly believe, that AA is in its inherent quality absolutely inadequate to counter-balance racism in an agreeable fashion.

I can already smell how one may answer, that I can not offer hard facts. That is true, but neither can the other side. There is no factual argumentation for how AA would not be inadequate. It simply was decided to assume so. What I however can provide are undeniable inherent qualities of AA (except the last one, I can see a case for denying it, though I think it would be a very hard one) which strongly suggest that AA is not adequate. And in the absence of facts, the suggestions of those qualities is the most reasonable criteria left.

And now add the fact, that orientating on socio-economic criteria alone will not carry any of the drawbacks of AA (edit: except the backfiring, but in this case most people will be understanding), but in deed will have the virtue to - in contrast to AA - help the weakest of a discriminated race the most and at the same time will still have the virtue of AA, which is to balance the playing field between the races - because socio-economic factors have a bias for discriminated races.
Then I think the choice is very clear.

To conclude otherwise, does IMO only makes sense, if one judges racism to be so strong in its own right - independent of socio-economic factors - that it overshadows all the mentioned drawbacks of AA and makes an orientation on socio-economic factors insufficient.

But that has to be actually demonstrated.

That policy makers did not care to do so and that hence AA is already an established fact, does naturally not make a difference in that regard. It just means that policy makers felt like not thinking too hard, and hence AA should be terminated and be replaced by focusing on socio-economic factors until this hypothetical and for AA sufficient significance of racism (which is not sufficiently covered by orientation on socio-economic factors through overlap) is established.

And at last, I don't think that this would succeed. And that is not just a feeling. It starts with the mysterious fact, that this has not happened yet. And it further on is based on all I know about human nature and modern societies. Luiz even claims to have validated that the opposite is true and maybe he will still come forth with more substance.

Cutlass

May 21, 2012, 04:33 PM

Racist policies alive and well in the US today:

Our penal system
AuthorDaron Acemoglu and James Robinson

As we discussed in this blog post, the very high incarceration rates for African-Americans is a uniquely American failure.

There are fundamental problems with the US penal system in general, which locks up and puts under parole hundreds of thousands of young men (and women), mostly for non-violent offenses. But the comparison of the incarceration rates of whites and African-Americans, which is shown again in the next figure, is particularly jarring. Almost 5 out of every 100 male African-Americans are in jail, a rate more than five times that of white Americans.

http://whynationsfail.com/storage/incarceration%20rates.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSI ON=1337148538263

Rest of story HERE (http://whynationsfail.com/blog/2012/5/21/our-penal-system.html)

innonimatu

May 21, 2012, 04:38 PM

Racist policies alive and well in the US today:

Rest of story HERE (http://whynationsfail.com/blog/2012/5/21/our-penal-system.html)

The penal system is just reserving a higher percentage of vacancies for African-Americans. They're on board with affirmative action!

SiLL

May 21, 2012, 04:53 PM

Cutlass

May 21, 2012, 05:01 PM

innonimatu, you clearly failed to understand the logic of AA. Because what we need to do is allow whites to be imprisoned for lesser crimes than other races.

How on earth can the article not state actual crime rates for blacks in comparison to other races when pulling such a graph? Is it possibly inconvenient for the narrative of the article (haven't actually read it)?

Way to miss the point, dude.

For any given crime, a black person will get a far harsher prison sentence than a white person who did exactly the same thing. And that is only one aspect of the problem. There are consequences for policies like this. And they have long term and generational consequences as well.

SiLL

May 21, 2012, 05:20 PM

The graph does not show severity, but simply how many are imprisoned. I realize that severity has an impact on that, but my point remains perfectly valid, especially as I did not even try to argue the gist of the article.

Dude

Mise

May 22, 2012, 02:45 AM

Reminds me of another point: Employers are far more willing to hire white ex-convicts than black ex-convicts, even when convicted for similar crimes.

Leoreth

May 22, 2012, 02:49 AM

Is there affirmative action in the American penal system?

Cutlass

May 22, 2012, 06:43 AM

Is there affirmative action in the American penal system?

It's not affirmative action. It's a 150 year effort to lock up blacks for the purpose of denying them rights, opportunities, and property.

Leoreth

May 22, 2012, 06:47 AM

I know what you meant. That's why I ask if there's affirmative action in the US penal system to make up for that.

Cutlass

May 22, 2012, 06:57 AM

I don't understand what you mean by that.

Leoreth

May 22, 2012, 07:46 AM

I mean, do black convicts get lighter punishments to make up for inherent biases of the system? Less jail time? Should they, and if not, why not?

Cutlass

May 22, 2012, 08:05 AM

I mean, do black convicts get lighter punishments to make up for inherent biases of the system? Less jail time? Should they, and if not, why not?

Black convicts get heavier punishment for any given offense. That is the bias in the system. And that heavier punishment has effects in all other aspects of the socioeconomic performance of the black population.

What should happen is that the justice system should be colorblind. Rates of false convictions of blacks is very high. Charges filed for the same offense are higher for blacks. Blacks are routinely arrested and imprisoned for things that whites might only get a verbal warning or a minor fine for, or no action by the police at all. For the same crime, blacks usually get longer prison sentences. Every aspect of the criminal justice system treats black and white people differently.

Mise

May 22, 2012, 08:12 AM

Ugh... If you're asking that question, you are completely missing the purpose and intent of these policies. Putting black people above the law is not the same as putting them in university or in employment. It may look that way if you view Affirmative Action as an unfair advantage to black people, or even if you see it as a crass rectification of past wrongs imposed on black people. But if you look at it as what it is, as a means of elevating blacks to positions that we both want them to be in, and that they are qualified to be in, then it makes no sense. We want blacks to attend university; we recognise the racial discrimination that blacks as a group must overcome when applying for university; so we level out the playing field, so that more blacks can enrol in higher education that they are qualified for. We don't want blacks to commit crimes, so there is simply no reason for Affirmative Action to be applied here. If a black person knows that he will get better treatment by the university admissions system, he is more likely to apply to university; that's the purpose and intent of AA. But if a black person knows that he will get better treatment by the criminal justice system, he is more likely to commit crimes instead.

Again, if you understand the purpose and intent of AA, then there is simply no analogy between university admissions and law enforcement.

luiz

May 22, 2012, 08:19 AM

If the admission process to universities is entirely objective and guaranteed to be free of any kind of discrimination, than what rationale can be used to justify racial AA?

Mise

May 22, 2012, 08:22 AM

Cutlass

May 22, 2012, 08:25 AM

If the admission process to universities is entirely objective and guaranteed to be free of any kind of discrimination, than what rationale can be used to justify racial AA?

University admission does not exist in a vacuum.

Patroklos

May 22, 2012, 08:26 AM

Way to miss the point, dude.

For any given crime, a black person will get a far harsher prison sentence than a white person who did exactly the same thing. And that is only one aspect of the problem. There are consequences for policies like this. And they have long term and generational consequences as well.

Perhaps this is the case (probably not), but nothing you posted in this thread demonstrates this.

SiLL

May 22, 2012, 08:47 AM

So once I go into lengths great enough so people do not have a chance to attack my argument against AA by not understanding it, it gets the tl;dr treatment.... Well as long as I post on these boards and wherever racial AA sparks disagreement, I shall link to this post :p

Mise

May 22, 2012, 08:53 AM

I read it SiLL :p I just don't have anything to say that I haven't already said. My response is simply that, like the minimum wage, I can accept a little bit of economic inefficiency and a few cries of "gosh it's just so hard to be a Straight White Man these days", for the benefit of aiding 60% or so of the population. You seem to simply disagree that the trade-off is worthwhile.

SiLL

May 22, 2012, 09:26 AM

taillesskangaru

May 22, 2012, 09:44 AM

Solutions:
- Affordable tertiary education
- Curbing "educational inflation"
- Diversification of educational institutions
- Diversification of the economy
- Strong welfare state

SiLL

May 22, 2012, 10:02 AM

Your point that the American society is inherently not that good in helping not so well off population groups is a good one (very limited welfare [poverty cycle] and tertiary education [social mobility]).
But what do you mean by educational inflation and what exactly does this diversification mean you speak of?

luiz

May 22, 2012, 10:12 AM

If you're naive enough to believe that an "entirely objective" admissions process is even possible, or that it is "guaranteed to be free of any kind of discrimination" then... whatevs. When you're talking about marginal cases, i.e. in cases where AA is applicable, there's no such thing as "entirely objective". Candidate A is never objectively better than candidate B.

Unless you believe mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and etc. are "White Male Sciences", then yeah, I do believe it's possible to be entirely objective in a test.

Flying Pig

May 22, 2012, 11:01 AM

Any test in which it is possible to improve one's performance through training will ultimately display racial bias.

Mise

May 22, 2012, 11:01 AM

Solutions:
- Affordable tertiary education
- Curbing "educational inflation"
- Diversification of educational institutions
- Diversification of the economy
- Strong welfare state
It's not just about that though, is it. There are four problems main here, all of which are endogenous to one another:

1) There's an attainment gap. Of course, there are SE (I'm just going to abbreviate "socioeconomic" to SE from now on) reasons for this, which can be solved with some of what you're suggesting.
2) There's an admissions gap. AA is aimed at solving this problem.
3) There's an expectations gap. This means that women, minorities, and those of low SESs don't even apply for university, because they don't believe they can get in. AA is aimed at solving this as well.
4) Then there is straight up racism, sexism, homophobia etc. AA tries to address this artificially at first, and then hopefully through the demonstration that blacks, women, gays, etc are actually capable of studying in universities, in workplaces, etc.

So what you're suggesting will go a long way towards addressing (1), will go some way towards addressing (2), and may even address (3) and possibly (4) (though honestly, 4 will go away by itself if we're willing to wait long enough). But here's where what I've been saying about the minimum wage kicks in. Even the easiest and cheapest of what you're suggesting will cost a crapload of money. It will take a generation of consistent, sustained spending and hard graft to even make an impact on problem (1). It will have to survive changes in government, changes in taxation, changes in the economy, the spending cuts and austerity imposed during cyclical downturns, changes in public attitude, and so on. The vast majority of black people currently alive would not benefit from more money spent on education, so the criticism that AA benefits only a small minority would still apply here. We know that all of our existing policies on tackling poverty are grossly inadequate -- otherwise, there would be no more poverty, or at the very least, people of low SESs would be equally represented in universities, employment, etc. And even if it did all work perfectly, we're still only focussing on the first two really: there's no guarantee that it will feed through to problems (3) and (4), and if it did, it would take several generations to even see the effect.

AA is a shortcut to equality in attainment, just like the minimum wage is a shortcut to equality of income. If people put aside the fact that we're doing this based on "race", which is just as arbitrary and uncontrollable as being born into a poor household, then I'm sure more people would see it the way I do.

SiLL

May 22, 2012, 11:09 AM

That it is about race is not just a cosmetic feature. It has crucial implications for the usefulness of this approach.
Your argument is in itself sound, but simply does not take into account all the factors that need consideration. The comparison to minimum wages stays flawed on the whole.

Cutlass

May 22, 2012, 11:43 AM

That makes me glad to hear :)
But I am not only disagreeing that it was worthwhile. As my post explains, I think there is no valid rational that it was worthwhile and which is not appalling far to seek as soon as one bothers to dig into the depths of what AA in practice can be projected to really mean. That all that is left in the end is to insist on advantaging entire races no matter what, based on the intuitive feeling that this must be good. Simply disregarding all that is wrong about this approach. Which is not just covered with white boys whining (while them being discriminated is one part of my argument, though a secondary one) and economic inefficiencies (which I did not even care to mention), but concerns the very purpose of AA, too.
So basically, that racial AA ultimately is most of all supported for sentimental reasons, not for sound objective criteria.

I am in fact reading your argument. But the point of it all is that you are wrong in the core of your argument.

Affirmative Action does not, never has, never will, advantage blacks over whites. You must understand that before you can understand AA. What AA does is take a group that is badly disadvantaged in a number of ways, all of them artificial and imposed from without, and offset some of that disadvantage so that they have a shot at outcomes that would be similar to what would be expected had they never been artificially disadvantaged. And beyond that, the program was so poorly designed and implemented that it barely accomplished even that much. At no point in time were blacks given an unfair advantage. No one even proposed doing so.

Now the benefits to doing this are extremely valuable. It will erode away the segregation that results in racism and further group exploitation and oppression. It will erode away the the underperformance of blacks who never get a fair chance to compete in the economy. It will make the country more of a meritocracy, where the best people can get the best outcomes based on ability and effort. It will increase the growth of the economy by ending the practice of keeping a group underperforming their abilities for no other reason than that they are not permitted to perform up to their abilities.

Now the costs of doing this is practically nonexistent. A small number of white people will actually have to work and compete to get what was previously an entitlement.

Now consider the costs of not doing it. They are huge. A year in prison costs more than a year in a good university. People with hope and a future commit fewer crimes, have healthier habits, make better life choices about children and family. The economy as a whole underperforms because so many people within it do, and there is so much governmental costs for remedial actions, remedial schooling, welfare, law enforcement.

You are talking about essentially no costs to rectify a problem that has vast costs. Objectively you cannot make a case against AA.

luiz

May 22, 2012, 01:16 PM

Affirmative Action does not, never has, never will, advantage blacks over whites. You must understand that before you can understand AA. What AA does is take a group that is badly disadvantaged in a number of ways, all of them artificial and imposed from without, and offset some of that disadvantage so that they have a shot at outcomes that would be similar to what would be expected had they never been artificially disadvantaged. And beyond that, the program was so poorly designed and implemented that it barely accomplished even that much. At no point in time were blacks given an unfair advantage. No one even proposed doing so.

The thing is, the proponents of race-based AA were never capable of quantifying the "disadvantage" of being black, and therefore any "compensatory" system you can come up with can indeed generate unfairness and favor certain blacks over certain whites. And I insist, the blacks that benefit from AA are already competing with whites and don't need any bonus to begin with. Poorer blacks see no benefit whatsoever. The people benefited from it are not the ones who end up in jail.

But anyway. Fact is if you give a black candidate a certain amount of extra points, while not knowing how many points being black cost him (if any), you are indeed shooting in the dark and committing an injustice while at it.

Also, your sweeping generalization is demonstrably false if we think of places that adopted more radical AA, like racial quotas.

Ajidica

May 22, 2012, 01:24 PM

Flying Pig

May 22, 2012, 01:26 PM

I think the difficulty that people have applying the current, relatively simple system demonstrates that anything more complex would be impossible to run.

luiz

May 22, 2012, 01:31 PM

I think the difficulty that people have applying the current, relatively simple system demonstrates that anything more complex would be impossible to run.

The system would be much more simple if it were focused on socio-economic background. Or, even better, scrapped altogether and replaced for quality public education for everyone.

Flying Pig

May 22, 2012, 01:35 PM

Or, even better, scrapped altogether and replaced for quality public education for everyone.

Public education can never hope to match private simply because of funding - if society was prepared to pay enough so that state schools spent as much per pupil as public schools, the parents would simply all opt for private education.

Quackers

May 22, 2012, 01:50 PM

That implies spending per pupil is the only determinant of a quality education. I remember America spends a huge amount on education (http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_spe_per_sec_sch_stu-spending-per-secondary-school-student) and still cannot match countries like Finland and South Korea on international tests.

Anyway sounds like a great topic for some econometrics.

luiz

May 22, 2012, 02:00 PM

Public education can never hope to match private simply because of funding - if society was prepared to pay enough so that state schools spent as much per pupil as public schools, the parents would simply all opt for private education.

Yeah, spending is not the only determinant of quality, as Quackers said. The US does indeed spend more per capita on its students than anyone else, and results are mediocre.

It's possible to have a very good and universal public education system (up to high school) without spending a fortune.

Flying Pig

May 22, 2012, 02:00 PM

OK, but I'll say that in the same country, it may as well be - schools will pretty much copy each other in nearly every other regard if someone comes up with an idea that works, particularly when the cultures are broadly the same. It's naive to think that the public sector can outpace the private based on some magic, impossible to emulate, free stroke of genius.

SiLL

May 22, 2012, 02:05 PM

@Cutless
First of all, what luiz said. Are you sure you read my post? Because what he replied can also be found within it. And that AA aims at those that need help the least further increases the potential for unfair disadvantages.
Seriously, the first statement of your post, which you bothered to bold and write cursive, is factually untrue. You need to understand that.
Secondly, that racism somehow causes economic costs is probably a reasonable assumption. To just shoot this out there in the inflated manner you did and to use it as some universal justification for AA is not reasonable however.
Your other assumptions about AA, that it will make the world a better place, meritocracy, save the oppressed etc, are vague and IMO quit spurious as well and my post (sorry if I seem a little obsessed with this post, but I feel it contains all key arguments against AA while considering a pro-AA stance) offered IMO good reason to not assume so in such a seemingly reflexive manner.

The only point I take no issue with is that AA has little costs. But only in the sense of economic costs. However, naturally, economic cost is not the ultimate criteria to policy decisions, or at least should not be. What serves the people in the best way, what is "right"/moral does. And there AA IMO fails.
This may have been touched on
Slightly.... :p But yes, SE (and God why did no one introduce this earlier?!) has significant advantages over race. I myself am also arguing with the assumption that racial AA would be replaced by SE, not just abolished. Its only drawback is that it does not benefit all members of a race (that is also those which need it the least), but only those which need it the most. But well, I don't actually see this as a drawback, but another advantage.
I think the difficulty that people have applying the current, relatively simple system demonstrates that anything more complex would be impossible to run.
Oh come on, what a smug statement to make. "It is so easy, but they still don't want to surrender to its awesomeness". Maybe it is because it simply sucks?

Mise

May 22, 2012, 02:58 PM

This may have been touched on, but would AA lose anything by ignoring race altogether and focusing on, as Mise so thankfully abbreviated it, SE? It addresses the same core problems while nicely avoid the whole 'reverse racism' stuff.
Well, I've touched on some reasons why AA based on SE wouldn't solve the problem entirely in my last post, but no, I haven't made them explicit.

AA based on SE would help insofar as the problems that black people face are in part a result of them being in of a low SES (the last S stands for "status"). But they won't help problems that black people face independent of that, such as the racism that prevents them from being hired in greater numbers, or that causes them to be arrested in greater numbers. It's just a fact that the police force is a racist institution in this country; the London Metropolitan Police Service has the honour of being described as "institutionally racist" by an official public inquiry, and it is still largely an open question as to whether they have managed to purge racism from the force since the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry.

In America meanwhile, there really isn't escaping the fact that a large section of American society is straight up racist. Half of Republicans (or something like that) think that Obama is a Muslim - in large part because they can't call him a N-----. The entire "birther" nonsense clearly had racist motivations among a large proportion of its belligerents. And yet, Obama is one of the most privileged black men in America. He's not even wholly black, he's half white! Obama can't escape being discriminated against due to his skin colour, and he's the freaking President of the United States! How on Earth can we expect black people of low SES to be treated equally, when the most successful black man in America still gets racially discriminated?

Anyway, the reason why I'm making this point isn't to suggest that we need "Affirmative Action" applied in courts, or that Obama should get an extra 5 electoral college seats for free in the election. The point is to demonstrate that blacks have problems that whites simply don't ever have to worry about, and this is true regardless of SES. Tackling SES will get you half way there, but there are still problems that blacks face that whites never will.

Additionally, AA based on SE would also do little to help women, for obvious reasons. Of course, the problems women face are different to the problems blacks face (e.g. they don't face much of any discrimination in university admissions), and women's problems can probably be solved through employment legislation, but it's worth bearing in mind.

SiLL

May 22, 2012, 03:04 PM

God dame it. Wrong thread.

Deviate

May 22, 2012, 03:52 PM

@SE-Only Folks

How do you account for the following quote from the study?

"The results show significant discrimination against African-American names: White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. We also find that race affects the benefits of a better resume. For White names, a higher quality resume elicits 30 percent more callbacks whereas for African Americans, it elicits a far smaller increase." (One can read the details if they wish. There's a section about being from an affluent neighborhood.)

Also, I'm genuinely interested in the answer to the following question:

Do you believe that Racism* still exists in America?

*Systemic racial discrimination by governments, corporations, religions, or educational institutions or other large organizations with the power to influence the lives of many individuals.

SiLL

May 22, 2012, 04:08 PM

Don't tell me that this is from the same study which has already been discussed in great length.
And what exactly do you mean by "systemic"?
But most of all: The general existence of racism is not enough to justify AA!!!
RAHHHHG
Sorry about that.

edit:
@Mise
You last post consisted of nothing more than complaining about racism. How racial AA actually is suitable to tackle those you did not even bother to get into. So you essentially just established that SE-based-AA does not put a stop to the negative effects of racism. This is what I mean with sentimental reasoning.

Cutlass

May 22, 2012, 04:12 PM

This may have been touched on, but would AA lose anything by ignoring race altogether and focusing on, as Mise so thankfully abbreviated it, SE? It addresses the same core problems while nicely avoid the whole 'reverse racism' stuff.

Poor white people are not poor because of systematic oppression and discrimination. Poor black people are. SE AA alone will not address the causes of the problem, and so will not address the effects of the problem.

Cutlass

May 22, 2012, 04:15 PM

@Cutless
First of all, what luiz said. Are you sure you read my post? Because what he replied can also be found within it. And that AA aims at those that need help the least further increases the potential for unfair disadvantages.
Seriously, the first statement of your post, which you bothered to bold and write cursive, is factually untrue. You need to understand that.
Secondly, that racism somehow causes economic costs is probably a reasonable assumption. To just shoot this out there in the inflated manner you did and to use it as some universal justification for AA is not reasonable however.
Your other assumptions about AA, that it will make the world a better place, meritocracy, save the oppressed etc, are vague and IMO quit spurious as well and my post (sorry if I seem a little obsessed with this post, but I feel it contains all key arguments against AA while considering a pro-AA stance) offered IMO good reason to not assume so in such a seemingly reflexive manner.

The only point I take no issue with is that AA has little costs. But only in the sense of economic costs. However, naturally, economic cost is not the ultimate criteria to policy decisions, or at least should not be. What serves the people in the best way, what is "right"/moral does. And there AA IMO fails.

Slightly.... :p But yes, SE (and God why did no one introduce this earlier?!) has significant advantages over race. I myself am also arguing with the assumption that racial AA would be replaced by SE, not just abolished. Its only drawback is that it does not benefit all members of a race (that is also those which need it the least), but only those which need it the most. But well, I don't actually see this as a drawback, but another advantage.

Oh come on, what a smug statement to make. "It is so easy, but they still don't want to surrender to its awesomeness". Maybe it is because it simply sucks?

If moral costs are your primary consideration, then no ifs ands or buts, you are for AA. Opposing AA is opposing the moral imperatives.

SiLL

May 22, 2012, 04:25 PM

If the world only was that simple. Well I guess what not is one can just decide to be so.

Cutlass

May 22, 2012, 04:36 PM

If the world only was that simple. Well I guess what not is one can just decide to be so.

Making the moral choice means doing something more than saying "sucks to be them".

SiLL

May 22, 2012, 04:39 PM

I love how that harmonizes with my assumption about why AA is supported to begin with.

Cutlass

May 22, 2012, 04:45 PM

Then I've lost your point. AA is opposed because people want whites to have an unfair advantage. Why do you think it is supported?

SiLL

May 22, 2012, 04:55 PM

Finale assumption marked.

But I am not only disagreeing that it was worthwhile. As my post explains, I think there is no valid rational that it was worthwhile and which is not appalling far to seek as soon as one bothers to dig into the depths of what AA in practice can be projected to really mean. That all that is left in the end is to insist on advantaging entire races no matter what, based on the intuitive feeling that this must be good. Simply disregarding all that is wrong about this approach. Which is not just covered with white boys whining (while them being discriminated is one part of my argument, though a secondary one) and economic inefficiencies (which I did not even care to mention), but concerns the very purpose of AA, too.
So basically, that racial AA ultimately is most of all supported for sentimental reasons, not for sound objective criteria.
I went deeper into that in my long post.
But to emphasize again and this time with more focus on how my assumption correlates with what I witness: From what I have gathered when it comes to racial AA supporters it is all about pointing out how people may suffer for their race and very little - yes next to nothing is done to demonstrate how AA is a reasonable consequence of this impression. The best shot so far was done by Mise with his comparison to minimum wage. But there he didn't actually consider the flaws that characterize racial AA (edit: or a least not very thorough so). He stayed on a general level and talked about how measures, which are supposed to shape society as a whole, in general can be justified even though they cause trouble.

Cutlass

May 22, 2012, 05:08 PM

Finale assumption marked.

I went deeper into that in my long post.
But to emphasize again and this time with more focus on how my assumption correlates with what I witness: From what I have gathered when it comes to racial AA supporters it is all about pointing out how people may suffer for their race and very little - yes next to nothing is done to demonstrate how AA is a reasonable consequence of this impression. The best shot so far was done by Mise with his comparison to minimum wage. But there he didn't actually consider the flaws that characterize racial AA (edit: or a least not very thorough so). He stayed on a general level and talked about how measures, which are supposed to shape society as a whole, in general can be justified even though they cause trouble.

Ya know, I very deliberately did not make any moral or sentimental argument. I gave you exclusively an objective argument. But you didn't accept that, and said that morality against AA trumps objective criteria for AA. I answered that that morality is explicitly clear in favor of AA.

So here we sit: Given an objective argument for AA, you reject it for moral reasons. Given a moral argument for AA, you reject it for objective reasons.

And you are wrong on both counts. You've had it explained to you why.

SiLL

May 22, 2012, 05:16 PM

Ya know, I very deliberately did not make any moral or sentimental argument. I gave you exclusively an objective argument. But you didn't accept that, and said that morality against AA trumps objective criteria for AA.
Excuse me? Where did you get that? Morality is of course substantiated by objective criteria. (edit: Or rather: How moral something really is.) And I rejected your "objective argument" for reasons that you apparently don't feel worthy of consideration. While it did hardly address my points of the long post.
edit2 (I need to stop posting right ahead): But I admit that you gave it a short to argue on objective ground alone.

I answered that that morality is explicitly clear in favor of AA.

Yes yes and I disagree. We should not get hung up on this point. We obviously both believe our points of views to be morally superior.

SiLL

May 22, 2012, 05:25 PM

And you know, I would in principle like to explain how your post did not consider my points, but at this point it feels like a total waste of time. I mean a gave the long post basically all I got and thought to have done a pretty good job, but now it seems in vain.

Cutlass

May 22, 2012, 05:26 PM

Excuse me? Where did you get that? Morality is of course substantiated by objective criteria. (edit: Or rather: How moral something really is.) And I rejected your "objective argument" for reasons that you apparently don't feel worthy of consideration. While it did hardly address my points of the long post.

Yes yes and I disagree. We should not get hung up on this point. We obviously both believe our points of views to be morally superior.

I can't parse out any objective opposition to what I said from your posts. All I get is that you didn't even consider what I said at all. :crazyeye:

The situation is this: Consider the analogy of a race. The staring position is that the white guy has 100m to run, and the black guy has 150m to run. You see the white guy winning, and assume that he's the faster runner. And you are objecting to letting the black guy only run the same 100m because that would be unfair to the white guy.

Cutlass

May 22, 2012, 05:27 PM

SiLL

May 22, 2012, 05:38 PM

Thinking about it, I actually see what you mean with regards to your objective argument. I made not much effort to explain my opposition and if I were you, I would probably feel the same as you do about that (though I would still have engaged the criticism at least - which would have lead to further explanation). So alright, I'll give it another more thorough shot. But that will have to wait until the day after tomorrow I am afraid. Maybe already tomorrow, but don't count on it.

Quackers

May 22, 2012, 05:42 PM

The situation is this: Consider the analogy of a race. The staring position is that the white guy has 100m to run, and the black guy has 150m to run. You see the white guy winning, and assume that he's the faster runner. And you are objecting to letting the black guy only run the same 100m because that would be unfair to the white guy.

To be fair the black guy would probably still win this sprint :lol:

Cutlass

May 22, 2012, 05:48 PM

To be fair the black guy would probably still win this sprint :lol:

It's been known to happen. But that doesn't mean that most of them can do it.

Mise

May 23, 2012, 02:56 AM

@Mise
You last post consisted of nothing more than complaining about racism. How racial AA actually is suitable to tackle those you did not even bother to get into. So you essentially just established that SE-based-AA does not put a stop to the negative effects of racism. This is what I mean with sentimental reasoning.
If you accept that SE-based AA is suitable to tackle SE-based issues, then you ought to accept that race-based AA is suitable to tackle race-based issues, for the same reasons. Or at least, you would have to prove that race-based AA is inadequate but SE-based AA is not inadequate. To me, the reason why SE-based AA is adequate to tackle SE-based problems is the same reason why race-based AA is adequate to tackle race-based problems.

Deviate

May 23, 2012, 06:33 AM

Don't tell me that this is from the same study which has already been discussed in great length.
And what exactly do you mean by "systemic"?
But most of all: The general existence of racism is not enough to justify AA!!!
RAHHHHG
Sorry about that.

I find it interesting that a set of black names are seen as "poor" and the white names are seen as "not poor." (Also, for some totally anecdotal evidence, I just sent the list of names to one of my bosses who is black. He described the names as "middle class.")

I think it would be helpful if when saying "AA" that we specify what part of AA we're specifically talking about.

luiz

May 23, 2012, 07:00 AM

I find it interesting that a set of black names are seen as "poor" and the white names are seen as "not poor." (Also, for some totally anecdotal evidence, I just sent the list of names to one of my bosses who is black. He described the names as "middle class.")

I think it would be helpful if when saying "AA" that we specify what part of AA we're specifically talking about.

That was a problem of the methodology chosen by the study. They chose the "most uniquely white" and "most uniquely black" names, not the most common names for blacks and whites. The thing is, the "most uniquely black" names are all poor names (or at least perceived as such, lets face it, most people do not consider Jamal and co. to be middle class names), while none of the "most uniquely white" names in those cities were poor names. If they were doing their research at another place, like somewhere in Appalachia, they might have found "uniquely white" names such as Cletus and Billy Bob, which are also regarded as poor names.

luiz

May 23, 2012, 08:28 AM

Another point against the "discrimination is preventing blacks from going to college" argument is that blacks are not, in fact, the ethnic group least likely to attend college in the US. 20% of blacks have at least a bachelor's degree, compared to 14% of "hispanics", who also have the lower overall per capita income.

Should we assume "hispanics" face greater discrimination, or realize that historical and other factors play the dominant role?

Cutlass

May 23, 2012, 11:26 AM

There are always other factors. But the fact that there are other factors does in no way diminish the factor of systemic racism.

Deviate

May 23, 2012, 01:48 PM

The thing is, the "most uniquely black" names are all poor names (or at least perceived as such, lets face it, most people do not consider Jamal and co. to be middle class names)

[Citation Needed]

Bamspeedy

May 23, 2012, 02:45 PM

About the names:

1. So if I understand correctly, the study kept the same names but changed the address to test the rich-poor factor? If one is prejudiced against a name they won't even look to the next line to look at the address. I think the study proves that people do judge names, it just needs to be shown if it's because of a 'black' name or a 'poor' name.

2. Names change in popularity. I read somewhere that what the elite name their kids now will be popular amongst the masses (the poor) 10 years from now.

Here:

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/2005/04/trading_up.html

This lets you look at name popularity over the years:

http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager#

3. Here is an interesting article from Slate about names.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/2005/04/a_roshanda_by_any_other_name.html

But it isn't the fault of his or her name. If two black boys, Jake Williams and DeShawn Williams, are born in the same neighborhood and into the same familial and economic circumstances, they would likely have similar life outcomes. But the kind of parents who name their son Jake don't tend to live in the same neighborhoods or share economic circumstances with the kind of parents who name their son DeShawn. And that's why, on average, a boy named Jake will tend to earn more money and get more education than a boy named DeShawn. DeShawn's name is an indicator—but not a cause—of his life path.

SiLL

May 23, 2012, 03:25 PM

So here it is. A 1-by-1-reply to your post.

Affirmative Action does not, never has, never will, advantage blacks over whites. You must understand that before you can understand AA. What AA does is take a group that is badly disadvantaged in a number of ways, all of them artificial and imposed from without, and offset some of that disadvantage so that they have a shot at outcomes that would be similar to what would be expected had they never been artificially disadvantaged.
On the level of race, that is true. On the individual level, it only partially is true. And to what extend is anyone's guess. In principle, the same goes for SE. A low SES is a pretty good indicator that someone is disadvantaged, but it is no guarantee. Just as a high SES is no guarantee that some is advantaged, but just a pretty good indicator of being so.

But I hope we can at least agree on one substantial difference: SE is a better indicator than race how disadvantaged someone really is. Not saying race isn't of some importance too, just saying SE is more crucial.

The question is, that if someone agrees that SE was a good orientation for AA (which I do and I'd think you do too), why someone thinks race is not (which I don't, but you do). The obvious answer is: Because someone does not think that the impact of racism is significant enough. I argued before, in the other thread, that my criticism was of a conceptional nature and that the actual extend of racism hence played no role. This was wrong. But where I still see grounds for this conceptional approach is in the direct comparison of SE and racism. Bear with me for a few lines:

Our market economy is inherently designed to favor high SES. It is not just a cultural phenomena or whatever, but a necessity of the system. A low SES means that your parents did not have success in the society and so natural, they will tend to pass that on to you. This effect will be strengthened by a neighborhood typical for your SES and by a school typical for your SES. And if this weren't bad enough, you also will lack financial support with regards to tertiary education.
So it to me seems that SE is by nature so significant, that if one would oppose this as a criteria for AA, one could just as well oppose any measure to fight the way society develops for certain groups of people.

In the case of racism, it is not a matter of the design of the economy. It is a cultural phenomena, a matter of what people associate with being black and also with black culture like the special way black people talk etc. In this sense, racism is also a lot less special than SE. Because this kind of cultural phenomena in principle applies to a wide variety of things.
As already has been explained: People are discriminated against for their height, their gender, their general looks, their general cultural background etc.
What makes racism so special is its history of public endorsement and its history of ideological endorsement. A history, which has A) caused lower SES for black people today, B) created conscious endorsement to discriminate black people and C) created a profound group mentality along racial lines. A), B) and C) resulted in D): a lot of sub-conscious or at least intuitive racism to boot.
So I acknowledge that racism is a special severe case of discrimination on cultural grounds, but one should not forget that it is not alone.
Now, SE-based AA will tackle A), so when it comes to racial AA, we can forget about that as a justification. C) is also not in favor of racial AA or at least dubiously so. As racial AA may help C) to flourish and by this also indirectly D). But still, we are left with conscious and intuitive racism, AA is supposed to counter-balance.

But here is the picture I see: In contrast to SE, where the SES has without a doubt a high probability to disadvantage an individual, in case of racism we have no idea how high this probability actually is. We don't know where SE exactly ends and racism starts (even though how quick some are to just assume the latter). We can only speculate. Additionally, many other cultural factors will have a say in the success of an individual. Which blurs the actual impact of racism even more. And this is where my problem lies, which is most of all of a conceptional nature. Which is to single out a factor which is so unclear in its actual merit in general and which will hence be even a lot more unclear in its merit on the individual level. And to then use this factor as a criteria for default benefits.

Because that to me makes racial AA so unbearable impossible to judge how fair this really is, that I would say that the burden of proof does not lie with the opposes of racial AA, but its supporters.
In deed, it appears to me that the effort to counter-balance something like racism (instead of directly engaging it) is doomed to be arbitrary in its actual justice or injustice. Hence, justice is not actually a viable argument. Just the wish that certain races do better is. But this wish is racist in spirit if not based on a (reasonable) thought of justice. And I mean not just in theory, but also in practice. Which again AA can not possibly provide.

Why do you disagree? (and please don't just answer with complaining about racism ;))

It will erode away the segregation that results in racism and further group exploitation and oppression. It will erode away the the underperformance of blacks who never get a fair chance to compete in the economy. It will make the country more of a meritocracy, where the best people can get the best outcomes based on ability and effort. It will increase the growth of the economy by ending the practice of keeping a group underperforming their abilities for no other reason than that they are not permitted to perform up to their abilities.

As said, your assumptions about the merits of AA are quit spurious. I am sorry but I have to say so. "Will erode away the segregation that result in racism" This segregation is a result of SE and culture. Bonus points for being black in admission processes will hardly change that. That you argue with merit for a measure that does not even try to asses merit is really, well, incredible. I don't mean to be a douche, but it is. And how the fact, that black guy A will mange to get into a better university but white guy B not, does demonstrate how this will stimulate the economy I am left to wonder.

Now consider the costs of not doing it. They are huge. A year in prison costs more than a year in a good university.
As luiz already noted - AA will hardly benefit criminals. And one will hardly turn criminal for the lack of AA. I mean do you seriously argue that?

People with hope and a future commit fewer crimes, have healthier habits, make better life choices about children and family.
Okay Cutlass, please be honest: This is a hopeless hyperbole. Like I expect from a deceiving politician, but not from you. AA can not provide hope and future by itself. It is not even supposed to do so. It is supposed to influence general trends, not inspire you.

The economy as a whole underperforms because so many people within it do
I seriously don't see how AA has such an effect. There are limited places in universities, everywhere. AA will just mean that different races occupy the same places, but not based on merit, but a policy of social engineering.

, and there is so much governmental costs for remedial actions, remedial schooling, welfare, law enforcement.

Now you act like AA would tackle SE-factors. Which it doesn't. As said many times before, it actually supports most of all those members of a race which already are doing okay. And they don't cause those costs.

SiLL

May 23, 2012, 04:45 PM

If you accept that SE-based AA is suitable to tackle SE-based issues, then you ought to accept that race-based AA is suitable to tackle race-based issues, for the same reasons. Or at least, you would have to prove that race-based AA is inadequate but SE-based AA is not inadequate. To me, the reason why SE-based AA is adequate to tackle SE-based problems is the same reason why race-based AA is adequate to tackle race-based problems.
I tried to explain in my response to Cutlass why I believe it to be sound to differentiate between SE and racial AA. Which in summary is that the actual impact of race on the individual level is so vague that racial AA can not be expected to be just on this level. And if racial AA is supposed to be right because it makes the world more just by balancing unjust disadvantages for minority races, than its injustice on the individual level is the direct opposite of what is opposed to be achieved.
You can have the same injustice with SE, I admit that, but overall, SE has so much going for it, that it seems to clearly outweigh possible injustice on the individual level. In case of race, we don't have any idea how much impact it really has, where SE-derived disadvantages and different kinds of cultural discrimination ends and race starts.

Cutlass

May 23, 2012, 07:00 PM

So here it is. A 1-by-1-reply to your post.

On the level of race, that is true. On the individual level, it only partially is true. And to what extend is anyone's guess. In principle, the same goes for SE. A low SES is a pretty good indicator that someone is disadvantaged, but it is no guarantee. Just as a high SES is no guarantee that some is advantaged, but just a pretty good indicator of being so.

But I hope we can at least agree on one substantial difference: SE is a better indicator than race how disadvantaged someone really is. Not saying race isn't of some importance too, just saying SE is more crucial.

This is a tricky question. If the average of all black people is lower than the average of all white people, then it's pretty clear that races is the reason why. There isn't really any differential in ability. So since ability does not explain the difference, what does? What are the other factors besides race?

Now you say SES. But the average SES of blacks is lower than the average SES of whites. Why? Again, the only factor is the racial oppression blacks have, and continue to have, faced.

The question is, that if someone agrees that SE was a good orientation for AA (which I do and I'd think you do too), why someone thinks race is not (which I don't, but you do). The obvious answer is: Because someone does not think that the impact of racism is significant enough. I argued before, in the other thread, that my criticism was of a conceptional nature and that the actual extend of racism hence played no role. This was wrong. But where I still see grounds for this conceptional approach is in the direct comparison of SE and racism. Bear with me for a few lines:

Our market economy is inherently designed to favor high SES. It is not just a cultural phenomena or whatever, but a necessity of the system. A low SES means that your parents did not have success in the society and so natural, they will tend to pass that on to you. This effect will be strengthened by a neighborhood typical for your SES and by a school typical for your SES. And if this weren't bad enough, you also will lack financial support with regards to tertiary education.
So it to me seems that SE is by nature so significant, that if one would oppose this as a criteria for AA, one could just as well oppose any measure to fight the way society develops for certain groups of people.

Yes, it is true, that the system tends to resist socioeconomic class advancement. There is class advancement in the system, and there used to be even more of it. And a system that made more of it happen would be of a benefit to the nation as a whole.

I want there to be a lot of class mobility. The more the better.

However, you are vastly underrating how important race is to these outcomes. You seem to think that it is a trivial consideration in these outcomes. And it is not. It is a core consideration in these outcomes. It is one of the biggest considerations. You cannot dismiss it without failing to deal with the problem as a whole.

In the case of racism, it is not a matter of the design of the economy. It is a cultural phenomena, a matter of what people associate with being black and also with black culture like the special way black people talk etc. In this sense, racism is also a lot less special than SE. Because this kind of cultural phenomena in principle applies to a wide variety of things.
As already has been explained: People are discriminated against for their height, their gender, their general looks, their general cultural background etc.
What makes racism so special is its history of public endorsement and its history of ideological endorsement. A history, which has A) caused lower SES for black people today, B) created conscious endorsement to discriminate black people and C) created a profound group mentality along racial lines. A), B) and C) resulted in D): a lot of sub-conscious or at least intuitive racism to boot.
So I acknowledge that racism is a special severe case of discrimination on cultural grounds, but one should not forget that it is not alone.
Now, SE-based AA will tackle A), so when it comes to racial AA, we can forget about that as a justification. C) is also not in favor of racial AA or at least dubiously so. As racial AA may help C) to flourish and by this also indirectly D). But still, we are left with conscious and intuitive racism, AA is supposed to counter-balance.

Now here you are utterly, completely, and indefensibly wrong.

People are not different because their skin color is different. People are not different because their ethnic background is different. People are not different because their culture is different. That is not a reason, that is an excuse. And it stinks like that that thing that excuses are like in the commonly used phrase.

“Law and force cannot change a man's heart”
AuthorDaron Acemoglu and James Robinson

Well that’s what President Dwight Eisenhower supposedly said to Chief Justice Warren after the Supreme Court passed Brown vs. Board of Education which ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional.

But Brown vs. Board of Education, together with landmark federal legislations such as the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, was supposed to be a death knell for the institutions of the US South and it was.

Why didn’t Eisenhower get it?

Do take the time to read the whole blog post HERE (http://whynationsfail.com/blog/2012/4/5/law-and-force-cannot-change-a-mans-heart.html)

He didn’t because he had the wrong theory of why the South was the way it was. He thought that it was all due to southern culture, which was racist and which intrinsically thought of blacks and whites as being different. According to this cultural theory, the differences between the north and the south, for example in terms of race relations and institutions, were ancient and immutable and dated back to the creation of these societies in the 16th and 17th centuries. You can’t change people’s culture with a law. At least that’s what the theory says.

The racism is actually explicitly an economic, and not cultural, phenomenon. The racism exists, it was invented for, it was perpetuated for, exclusively economic reasons.

The racism exists as a divide and conquer strategy to keep wages down. To keep the group poor. Culture has nothing to do with it. Differing cultures are a result, not a cause, of the problem. And cultures can be changed.

Some people in America make a lot of the fact that there is overt racism today in the "liberal Northeast" while there is lessened overt racism in many areas of the "conservative Old South". And this is valid. It is true that in much of the Old South racism is not what it was. And many of these areas are actually quite friendly to blacks now. When the economic justification was cut off at the knees, the cultural justification was crippled, and began to fade away.

Many things are rooted in history, but the “culture” of the US South was actually not one of them as the historian C. Vann Woodward showed in his brilliant book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, published a year after Eisenhower’s remark.

Woodward showed that all of the supposed facets which distinguished southern society, particularly racial segregation and its institutionalization, did not date from deep history but were created de novo in the 1890s when southern states re-wrote their constitutions to control the black population which had been emancipated at the end of the Civil War (see also Suresh Naidu’s research on the impact of disenfranchising blacks).

But here is the picture I see: In contrast to SE, where the SES has without a doubt a high probability to disadvantage an individual, in case of racism we have no idea how high this probability actually is. We don't know where SE exactly ends and racism starts (even though how quick some are to just assume the latter). We can only speculate. Additionally, many other cultural factors will have a say in the success of an individual. Which blurs the actual impact of racism even more. And this is where my problem lies, which is most of all of a conceptional nature. Which is to single out a factor which is so unclear in its actual merit in general and which will hence be even a lot more unclear in its merit on the individual level. And to then use this factor as a criteria for default benefits.

Because that to me makes racial AA so unbearable impossible to judge how fair this really is, that I would say that the burden of proof does not lie with the opposes of racial AA, but its supporters.
In deed, it appears to me that the effort to counter-balance something like racism (instead of directly engaging it) is doomed to be arbitrary in its actual justice or injustice. Hence, justice is not actually a viable argument. Just the wish that certain races do better is. But this wish is racist in spirit if not based on a (reasonable) thought of justice. And I mean not just in theory, but also in practice. Which again AA can not possibly provide.

Why do you disagree? (and please don't just answer with complaining about racism ;))

Your argument that we can not exactly measure the effects of racism compared to the effects of other factors is really a weak argument. I mean, is it 50% of the cause, or 60% of the cause, and is it really important that we have that exactitude of the piece of information before we act on it? Well, it's not.

X takes from Y everything above bare subsistence for Y. X+1 (X's son) therefor has the opportunity for better housing, better education, better nutrition, better everything, than Y+1. X+1 then does the same to Y+1, and with the same result and this goes on and on generation after generation, eventually reaching the point where X+8 hasn't got the same power, and can confiscate less from Y+8. But despite that X+10 is still a hell of a lot better off than Y+10.

All that confiscation was justified based on race.

So yes, Y+10 has a much lower socioeconomic status than X+10. But you cannot separate that from where it came from.

Can you get exact numbers? No. But what does it matter? We know that it is an extremely large part. Do we truly have to quantify it to the last decimal place?

We do in fact have the number for the results, even if we don't have exact numbers for the causes.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b8/Weekly_Earnings.png

As said, your assumptions about the merits of AA are quit spurious. I am sorry but I have to say so. "Will erode away the segregation that result in racism" This segregation is a result of SE and culture. Bonus points for being black in admission processes will hardly change that.

I don't understand these objections. I fundamentally do not comprehend where they come from.

Where does the persistence of racism come from? They are not like us. They are a threat to us. We are afraid of them. They are a bunch of criminals. They are a bunch of welfare cheats. They are lazy. They won't work. They are a threat to our values. They want to take what is ours. They want to hurt us. They are different, and we can't live with them.
All of these things and more is that makes racism persist generation to generation. How do you address this? How do you end this? You end this by having people of good will intersecting with one another and realizing that people are people, and given a chance any groups of people are more alike than different.

It is the segregation that allows and facilitates the persistence of the racism which allows the persistence of the discrimination. That segregation must be ended to end all of the problems that flow from it.

AA is a weak and incomplete solution to that problem. But it is far, far, better than doing nothing.

That you argue with merit for a measure that does not even try to asses merit is really, well, incredible. I don't mean to be a douche, but it is. And how the fact, that black guy A will mange to get into a better university but white guy B not, does demonstrate how this will stimulate the economy I am left to wonder.

Let us say you have 100 applicants for a position. Doesn't matter if it's a job or a university slot. Any position. Now of that 100, 16 are black, so they will not get the position.

Can you say, can you make the claim, that the chosen candidate out of the remaining 86 represents the best candidate on purely merit criteria? No, you cannot. It might be, it might not be. You will never know. You will never know if you excluded the best candidate on a non-merit basis.

Your scenario makes the assumption that the excluded blacks are inherently less capable than the non excluded whites. But in reality you do not know that. You do not have that information.

You do not get to a merit based outcome until all candidates are given a fair chance.

Now it is explicitly obvious that this has a positive effect for the whole of the economy. 16% of the population is not allowed to work to their maximum ability and productivity. They are simply excluded from it. The economy as a whole will grow the strongest when the whole of the population is allowed to compete based on their merit. When no persons face artificial obstacles to their economic performance.

If a percentage of the population can only work at partial output because they are discriminated against, then that can only reduce the aggregate growth of the whole.

As luiz already noted - AA will hardly benefit criminals. And one will hardly turn criminal for the lack of AA. I mean do you seriously argue that?

Not all criminals come from abject poverty. But abject poverty certainly does breed criminals. Poverty with no foreseeable way out breeds criminals. No access to decent jobs and decent education breeds criminals.

You reach a point where the obstacles you expect people to overcome just exceed any hope the people facing those obstacles have to overcoming it.

And so they give up and give in and just drop out of being part of legitimate society.

People must have a believable route out. AA helps with that. It's not a lot of a benefit, but it's more than they have without it.

Okay Cutlass, please be honest: This is a hopeless hyperbole. Like I expect from a deceiving politician, but not from you. AA can not provide hope and future by itself. It is not even supposed to do so. It is supposed to influence general trends, not inspire you.

How so? Is it not obvious? :confused: I mean, your objection here flat out blindsides me. I'm at a loss as to how to respond to it.

People who have hope and prospects for the future behave differently than people who think they are fraked no matter what they do. Is that not obvious? There are self-destructive people in every group. But the highest numbers the greatest substance abuse, the riskiest behavior, gang membership, common crime, these activities are most common among those people who are at the bottom and have no expectations of having any way out of the bottom.

Make them believe that they can get out by their own efforts, that behavior changes. But they need a way out, and they need to believe in it.

I seriously don't see how AA has such an effect. There are limited places in universities, everywhere. AA will just mean that different races occupy the same places, but not based on merit, but a policy of social engineering.

Without AA the enrollment is not based on merit. What you are failing to see is that we do not have a merit bases system in the absence of AA. But the extra obstacles that blacks must overcome to get to the same place are not taken into consideration. AA offsets some of those extra obstacles, it does not bypass real merit.

Now you act like AA would tackle SE-factors. Which it doesn't. As said many times before, it actually supports most of all those members of a race which already are doing okay. And they don't cause those costs.

In part. Not in whole. AA does not exclusively benefit those who do not need it. That is a strawman argument. What it does do is give those might get into a good college or job a chance to get into a very good college or job. And those who might be qualified for some college or job have a chance. It is not perfect, but it does make many of the members of the group better off, not just those who don't need it.

Flying Pig

May 24, 2012, 04:16 AM

Again, the only factor is the racial oppression blacks have, and continue to have, faced

OK, but change that to Hispanics - it's not as simple as just 'blame racism'. Most Hispanics are poor because they immigrated from relatively poor countries, or because their families did so in the relatively recent past - even without any discrimination, they're still worse off in the job market.

Cutlass

May 24, 2012, 07:26 AM

OK, but change that to Hispanics - it's not as simple as just 'blame racism'. Most Hispanics are poor because they immigrated from relatively poor countries, or because their families did so in the relatively recent past - even without any discrimination, they're still worse off in the job market.

That's true. That's why I focus on the blacks. The Hispanics are a more complicated problem. And quite frankly I don't know how to break down the stats on it. Many speak little or no English, and that is an additional factor in their average poverty. Some 11 million of them are undocumented immigrants, and that cannot help but change their demographics and SES. So my question would be, what does the SES of Hispanics who are English speaking legal residents be?

SiLL

May 28, 2012, 03:15 PM

This is a tricky question. If the average of all black people is lower than the average of all white people, then it's pretty clear that races is the reason why. There isn't really any differential in ability. So since ability does not explain the difference, what does? What are the other factors besides race?

Now you say SES.
Ha! Correct :D

But the average SES of blacks is lower than the average SES of whites. Why? Again, the only factor is the racial oppression blacks have, and continue to have, faced.

The extends to which you surprise me seem to never end :eek: And you seem to contradict yourself her.
Because you also admit that

Yes, it is true, that the system tends to resist socioeconomic class advancement.
so there you already have a different factor for low SES of black people. History. But that is not contemporary racism, does not justify to benefit more from help than any other person which has a low SES and hence needs to be treated as an issue of its own.
That black people have a low SES to begin with is due to a history of racism/racial oppression. There is nothing to argue against that. Slavery, racism. What keeps black people from succeeding today is obviously a different question, though. And low SES breeds low SES. High SES breeds high SES. You say that yourself.
And now, lets play a thought experiment.

Imagine there is a fictional country x. Fictional country X has a social mobility that is not that bad, but also not that good. People in principle have the possibility to succeed, but the lower the SES, the harder it will be. This is true everywhere, but there are some things which alleviate the problem in country X. For one, welfare is very limited. There is a "everybody for themselves" - mentality present. That seems to give country X a lot of beneficial dynamic, but it also increases the risk to sink into poverty and most importantly to stay there to begin with. Which is a first minus for low SES. Further on, there is a strong tendency for similar SES to group, which again enhances the effect of SES. Your have specific SES neighborhoods and more importantly, even schools. There is a certain segregation based on SES present. And high school education can be abysmal, especially for lower SES, and this also increases the importance of parenthood and hence once again the importance of SES. And finally, tertiary education seems to maximize the segregation based on SES. There are top universities which are tremendously expensive, and low-tier community colleges which are way more affordable but lack any prestige.
Fictional country x knows no race, but it knows different classes of people based on SES. And while those classes are not fixed by law or public authorities, more abstract and complex social dynamics have their own way of taking care of it.
One day, something very strange happens. A lot of people suddenly have green skin. And this green skin has a bias for low SES. Though it can be found on all levels of society. Suddenly. many people who work at Burger king. clean the floors or shoot each other in lost town districts, are visually distinct. Intuitively, people start to see a direct relation between the color of the skin and the SES of people. And a generation later, green still would have a bias for low SES. For social dynamics tend to work slow in a stable society.

What I am trying to emphasize: You can not trust your intuition on racism. It will fool you. I think of the article of an American blogger who went to Europe and suddenly realized, that a lot he attributed to racism, was actually of a social nature. Yes this does not mean there wasn't racism. That it wouldn't disadvantage black people. Very correct.
But what is the actual, the real point of racial AA to begin with? To help black people? To help Mexicans? To help people who in their distant past got some Indian genes thrown into their own gene code?
Or is it to make the world simply more just? To fight the injustice that racism is with a little bit of justice?
If that is so, we should have good reason to assume that this also actually would be the result of racial AA.

But do we have such reason?

Let me summarize again: We know that SE fundamentally shapes every society and disadvantages people. We now that in the US, for a Western country, it does so especially strong. We know that other culturally rooted discrimination disadvantages people (you misunderstood what I meant by cultural*) and that here racism shines particular bright. We don't know how strong racism really is. It could be 25%. 50%... well Cutless let me say that I think this is beyond anything reasonable. If racism was 50%, social mobility would have to be a lot lower than it already is. As it is, it is lower than in Western Europe, but not so much lower that suggests so much additional impact by racism, which European nations will not have in such dimensions. And that does not even take into account other cultural factors. So maybe it is 25%. Maybe it is 10%. Maybe even less.. Who is to say? As said, you can't trust your intuition on this. Your public perception is so focused on racism that it inevitably will make you very biased and seeing the correlation between skin color and work status is just too tempting to not irrationally sway you.

Now lets assume an average of 20% impact in relation to SE and other cultural factors (and I think that is very generous). Now think of a white kid with a low SES. Who do you think is more disadvantaged? Is it justice to prefer the black kid with an alright SES over the white kid with a low SES? Can those 20% be expected to be enough that racial AA will create more justice than injustice? Could 25%?

I find that all very questionable.

*When I say racism is discrimination on cultural grounds, I mean it in a sociological sense of the word. Where culture describes simply the rinser, the glasses, the unspoken assumptions through which we perceive the world, of which racism is a part. But also just disliking guys in hip hop cloths and who engage in special elements of black culture. Just like one may dislike white trash while not for being white, but for not liking their cultural background.
But besides that, if people are not different due to their culture, culture would not exist to begin with :p So I am confused why you would suggest so.

However, you are vastly underrating how important race is to these outcomes. You seem to think that it is a trivial consideration in these outcomes. And it is not. It is a core consideration in these outcomes. It is one of the biggest considerations. You cannot dismiss it without failing to deal with the problem as a whole.

But if it is so essential, where is the study that controls for SE and actually shows so? It can't be too hard to do something like that, but where is it? Where? And how do you explain social mobility in nations where race is not so essential as you claim it to be in the US? As things are, this is mere speculation on your part, isn't it? Remember my example of above with the green skin. It would be very intuitive to blame the green skin for the woes of those people, wouldn't it? And it would be all the more so if your media talked about it all the time. And if those people with the green skin would start to actively perceive them selfs as a separate group. But it would be an illusion. What I am saying: I don't think you can trust your instincts on that. You need hard numbers. But not only that, those umbers need to be in favor of whom AA actually reaches (so not dirt poor ghetto kids, they can only depend on SE). I can only repeat: Very questionable in its actual justice.

Do take the time to read the whole blog post HERE (http://whynationsfail.com/blog/2012/4/5/law-and-force-cannot-change-a-mans-heart.html)

I read the whole post and it was interesting. But it does not argue that racism is a cultural phenomena (in the since I defined cultural above), but that it was primarily perpetuated by culture. That instead, economic conditions give rise to a culture of racism. And I find this a reasonable assumption.
But if bad economic conditions for black people are so crucial to racism, does this not imply that we should focus on those blacks which actually leave under bad economic conditions? Is that not an argument for SE rather than a merely racial criteria?

The racism exists as a divide and conquer strategy to keep wages down. To keep the group poor.
Again an argument to orientate on SE, to actually help those blacks which would receive those low wages.

Some people in America make a lot of the fact that there is overt racism today in the "liberal Northeast" while there is lessened overt racism in many areas of the "conservative Old South". And this is valid. It is true that in much of the Old South racism is not what it was. And many of these areas are actually quite friendly to blacks now. When the economic justification was cut off at the knees, the cultural justification was crippled, and began to fade away.

Well that is probably also due to the fact that the Northeast knows a lot of poor blacks due to the breakdown of Northeastern industry. Which creates a bad economic situation for them and perpetuates racism. And if this is true, will be most effectively tackled by helping black people with a low SES.

I don't understand these objections. I fundamentally do not comprehend where they come from.

My issue was primarily with "will erode away", as I think this to be quit a hyperbole even if racial AA is a good idea. But I admit, you have a point there. Fighting segregation is fundamentally good to fight racism Yet if this segregation, as you yourself say, is largely perpetuated by economic factors, I maintain, that to focus on SE would do a way better job in fighting segregation. As with SE you by default will focous on those blacks which actually do have a hard time to integrate. And without the dubious justice of racial AA.

Let us say you have 100 applicants for a position. Doesn't matter if it's a job or a university slot. Any position. Now of that 100, 16 are black, so they will not get the position.

Can you say, can you make the claim, that the chosen candidate out of the remaining 86 represents the best candidate on purely merit criteria? No, you cannot. It might be, it might not be. You will never know. You will never know if you excluded the best candidate on a non-merit basis.
[QUOTE=Cutlass;11519894]
Your scenario makes the assumption that the excluded blacks are inherently less capable than the non excluded whites.
It suffices if I assume that an arbitrary general preference based on race will not correlate with actual merit.

Now it is explicitly obvious that this has a positive effect for the whole of the economy. 16% of the population is not allowed to work to their maximum ability and productivity. They are simply excluded from it. The economy as a whole will grow the strongest when the whole of the population is allowed to compete based on their merit.
Agreed. Just that racial AA has nothing to with merit directly, but justice and the social dynamic of racism as a whole. The former is very questionable and the latter seems to be inefficiently thought with racial AA in comparison to making use of SE.

Not all criminals come from abject poverty. But abject poverty certainly does breed criminals. Poverty with no foreseeable way out breeds criminals. No access to decent jobs and decent education breeds criminals.

You reach a point where the obstacles you expect people to overcome just exceed any hope the people facing those obstacles have to overcoming it.

And so they give up and give in and just drop out of being part of legitimate society.

People must have a believable route out. AA helps with that. It's not a lot of a benefit, but it's more than they have without it.

Now you seem like you grab for every straw you can reach, no matter how short. Again, if poverty is what you are concerned with, focus on a measure for that: SES.

How so? Is it not obvious? :confused: I mean, your objection here flat out blindsides me. I'm at a loss as to how to respond to it.

People who have hope and prospects for the future behave differently than people who think they are fraked no matter what they do. Is that not obvious? There are self-destructive people in every group. But the highest numbers the greatest substance abuse, the riskiest behavior, gang membership, common crime, these activities are most common among those people who are at the bottom and have no expectations of having any way out of the bottom.

Make them believe that they can get out by their own efforts, that behavior changes. But they need a way out, and they need to believe in it.

And who are those hopeless souls who need hope? Integrated middle class blacks? Or people with a low SES?

Without AA the enrollment is not based on merit. What you are failing to see is that we do not have a merit bases system in the absence of AA. But the extra obstacles that blacks must overcome to get to the same place are not taken into consideration. AA offsets some of those extra obstacles, it does not bypass real merit.

An arbitrary advantage based on race does not bypass merit? Oh, so you think being black is a quality in itself now or what? Seriously, that makes no sense. Never mind how merit-based the system is to begin with, racial AA can not possibly make it more so.

In part. Not in whole. AA does not exclusively benefit those who do not need it. That is a strawman argument. What it does do is give those might get into a good college or job a chance to get into a very good college or job. And those who might be qualified for some college or job have a chance. It is not perfect, but it does make many of the members of the group better off, not just those who don't need it.
It is not a straw man argument. Given, it is a hyperbole, but only to illustrate the point, that AA will inevitably tend to target those which need it the least. Making it a terrible approach to help people in need to begin with - when it is about helping people in need of course. Fighting racism is a different quest. So is justice for a race. You will already have read my responses to those.