American Universities will now be all white and Asian

[Lexicus]

The real question is if enough of those people with the degrees either return to or remit money back to communities they came from to offset the removal of high performing young adults from the locality and the resultant loan burdens for students who do and do not finish. Right?

Why would this be the real question?

 

[Synobun]

About anything else is "better", because about anything else is actually not a fundamentally racist (real "racist", as in "treating people according to their race", not "it's only racist if it's from the other side" idiocy) policy.

As for something not just "better" but actually efficient, it just needs to ask the question "what IS the real problem ?", and fixing THAT.
The real problem is poverty, lack of social fluidity, lack of education and so on. The real problem is about lack of social welfare, depriving people from the low scales of the ladder of their opportunity. The problem of racism is that it keeps some "races" on the bottom, but the fundamental thing to fix is "being at the bottom" and the disparity between top and bottom.

Increase social welfare, increase public services, increase redistribution, reduce wealth gap. THOSE are actually real solutions to real problems.

Nice in theory. It didn't work out this way in reality. Social welfare and public services were increased, and the racial disparity continued to exist. Removing the "fundamentally racist" policies as you describe them results in the disparity growing (as @Owen Glyndwr provided earlier).

These systems weren't created from a blank slate. They were created in a society that actively despises certain racial demographics. That is difficult to work around, and simply pumping more money into it won't change the underlying problem of these demographics being edged out. You're also unintentionally advocating for far more invasive practices than affirmative action, and I doubt many here would disagree with your suggestion. Specifically increase funding and services for demographics that are discriminated against due to race? They'd sign up for that in a heartbeat. Except now you're advocating for "more schools specifically for black/hispanic people". Seems "fundamentally racist" to me if we're applying your standards to the idea here.

So yeah, sure, increase funding. Build schools, empower discriminated-against demographics. That would be great. In the meantime, these demographics still need and deserve access to education, and affirmative action helps bridge that gap.

Affirmative action is a discriminatory practice. It is self-described as such. If you take your fingers out of your ears after hearing that, you would then learn why this discriminatory practice exists. It does not exist to hurt people. It exists to make an attempt at equalizing opportunity that didn't previously exist between demographics. We don't live in a colour-blind world and pretending we do is inane.

 

[Ryika]

I think that's more a self-sustaining cycle than evidence for a society that "actively despises certain racial demographics". When people are in poverty, they stay in poverty, unless you actively do something against it. Even if all racism stopped existing in America tomorrow, black people would still not achieve, because they currently are in poverty. That is true for any community, including poor white communities.

So what is required are policies that increase people's social mobility.

Affirmative action does that, but it does it in the least efficient way possible. You take people who have gone through basic education that has already put them at a disadvantage, reward them with scholarships in large part based on their skin tone and only in a small part on how well they did in school. On that basis, it is not surprising that even with affirmative action black students still graduate into jobs that have much lower earnings potential, as was shown in that study that was linked a few days ago.

Honestly, I don't understand why people defend affirmative action so vehemently. It's an old system that has been shown to not lead to good results. Instead of trying to defend it from the assault of the right, why not instead argue for proper policy changes that help people in poverty? And by that I don't mean increasing Social welfare and public services - as those don't "solve" poverty, they just make living in poverty easier - but proper access to education from the very beginning.

Surely, that would be a basis on which a presidential election could easily be won, as poor people of every color would benefit from it.

 

[schlaufuchs]

This is assuming that racism is purely an economic issue. It is not. Programs targeted to address poverty broadly still end up disproportionately advantaging white poor people.

We have tried "color-blind" welfare programs in the past. They don't work. They help white people and continue to leave minorities behind.

 

[Ryika]

Then do it properly this time?

 

[Farm Boy]

This is assuming that racism is purely an economic issue. It is not. Programs targeted to address poverty broadly still end up disproportionately advantaging white poor people.

We have tried "color-blind" welfare programs in the past. They don't work. They help white people and continue to leave minorities behind.

Oh it's way more than economics. It's also power, and what types of interpersonal power we allow our government to dictate and manipulate.

 

[Traitorfish]

Then do it properly this time?

How broad is the space between "doing it wrong" and "reverse-racism", in your opinion? How much room for error do we have?

 

[stinkubus]

Never ceases to amaze me how the most vocal self-proclaimed anti-racists are typically the ones supporting the concept of "let's treat people according to their race". The typical example of self-defeating ideologues missing the point of their own ideologies.

Treating people according to their race is not, in and of itself, racist.

No matter how many times I've heard black people use the n-word to refer to each other I would never dare use it myself, even in a completely joking context with a close friend. It's too loaded coming from a white person.

Nor would I ever make a joke about any of the tropes or stereotypes that black people have been saddled with in America. Believe or not I make a sincere effort to avoid being cruel to others.

This behavior is the result not of prejudice by rather a desire to treat everyone I meet as kindly as I am capable of.

 

[stinkubus]

This is assuming that racism is purely an economic issue. It is not. Programs targeted to address poverty broadly still end up disproportionately advantaging white poor people.

We have tried "color-blind" welfare programs in the past. They don't work. They help white people and continue to leave minorities behind.

This is just the end result of the practice of block granting federal money to the states. It allows malevolent red states to waste and divert as much of the funds as possible to provide the minimal level of assistance the courts will allow them to get away with.

 

[warpus]

How broad is the space between "doing it wrong" and "reverse-racism", in your opinion? How much room for error do we have?

Surely the reverse of racism is an absence of racism.

 

[Traitorfish]

Surely the reverse of racism is an absence of racism.

I dunno, my university only taught Continental philosophy, I can't do all this formal logic stuff.

 

[Ryika]

How broad is the space between "doing it wrong" and "reverse-racism", in your opinion? How much room for error do we have?

I don't see any potential for "reverse-racism" here. If all you're doing is to increase the quality of education that is available to poor people, then there are no potential victims here. You could maybe say that the people who supervised those changes acted in racist ways, but the system itself would not be racist.

Even in the worst case scenario in terms of "reverse-racism" (or "racism", as I like to call it) where all poor black schools now offer much better education than before, and nothing has improved at all for poor white schools, you are not creating people who are unfairly put aside in favor of people who have achieved less than them. The only result is that nothing has changed for poor white people, which could then simply be fixed without disadvantaging anybody.

Simply increasing the social mobility by directly tackling the things that are holding back a demographic is not discrimination. Dragging people into higher education at the expense of people who are better qualified than them, purely on the basis of skin color, is.

 

[Lexicus]

This is just the end result of the practice of block granting federal money to the states. It allows malevolent red states to waste and divert as much of the funds as possible to provide the minimal level of assistance the courts will allow them to get away with.

It's not entirely. It springs from the fact that black people are actually discriminated against because they're black, it's not merely that there is ambient discrimination against poor people that happens to affect black people because black people are disproportionately poor.

This is the issue with college admissions. We've tried colorblind admissions policies meant to benefit poor people in general. They don't lead to a more racially-diverse student body. In fact I believe I've seen research claiming that this type of policy can actually exacerbate racial disparities in education, ie lead to proportionally fewer black students than there would be without any anti-discriminatory admissions policy at all.

The trope that "social democracy doesn't help black people" is almost entirely false and was cynically deployed by the right-wing of the Democratic Party to portray Bernie Sanders' politics as an all-white phenomenon. Interestingly, the Democrats are now trying the opposite tack by claiming that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' platform can't win in the midwest.

 

[warpus]

I dunno, my university only taught Continental philosophy, I can't do all this formal logic stuff.

If that's anything like continental breakfasts then you were ripped off and they taught you everything wrong as a joke.

 

[stinkubus]

Block granting is the mechanism that allows the states to apply aid in subtly discriminatory ways while having their schemes survive court scrutiny. It lets you do little things like ensure the welfare office is located as far away from any black neighborhoods as humanly possible. It also allows for excessive graft to whittle down the amount available to the disproportionately poor black population. It *is* the means by which the discrimination is applied.

I agree with your take on the trope regarding Social Democracy, but the US doesn't have that. We have a broken system which by design limits the power of the popular vote. On many issues it creates a de facto authoritarian state. Sometimes change is not possible through the political process: look at how difficult gun control or meaningful health care legislation is versus how well it polls with the public. Sometimes change is imposed against popular will: Trump's tax bill polls terribly, Wall St deregulation is only popular with those who work their and their media lapdogs, etc.

We have just enough of a pretense of Democracy, coupled with a largely apathetic populace (52% turnout in 2016 go ahead a find me another 1st world nation with turnout that low), to keep the farce going.

 

[Traitorfish]

If that's anything like continental breakfasts then you were ripped off and they taught you everything wrong as a joke.

That's the prevailing opinion among Analytical philosophers, yes.

 

[metalhead]

Then do it properly this time?

If there is no functional way to equitably distribute capital to lower social and economic classes without explicitly accounting for race, than "doing it properly" necessitates explicitly accounting for race.

 

[Lexicus]

If there is no functional way to equitably distribute capital to lower social and economic classes without explicitly accounting for race, than "doing it properly" necessitates explicitly accounting for race.

When you think about it, the idea that US social policy should be arranged such that it doesn't offend the sensibilities of some deeply ignorant European CFC posters is pretty funny.

 

[Ryika]

If there is no functional way to equitably distribute capital to lower social and economic classes without explicitly accounting for race, than "doing it properly" necessitates explicitly accounting for race.

I don't have a problem with accounting for race if that means making sure sure that black people actually get the help they're supposed to get under a race-neutral policy that is meant to tackle the state of impoverished neighborhoods. It makes perfect sense that, if in the past policies have not been implemented in a way that was equal between the poor people of each race, you would have an eye on that this time.

I would only have a problem with that if that meant giving capital exclusively to poor black communities to achieve some form of equal outcome, while ignoring poor white communities because "there's already so many of them at the top".

When you think about it, the idea that US social policy should be arranged such that it doesn't offend the sensibilities of some deeply ignorant European CFC posters is pretty funny.

Pfffft, you don't have to. But maybe you should listen to us Central and Northern Europeans, as we clearly are doing a better job than you when it comes to racial equality.

 

[luiz]

When you think about it, the idea that US social policy should be arranged such that it doesn't offend the sensibilities of some deeply ignorant European CFC posters is pretty funny.

Most Americans also oppose race-based affirmative action, as they have expressed every time they went to polls on the subject.