The suspicion is that inclusion of these diversity statements in the hiring process is a way to stealthily discriminate on the basis of race when it is ostensibly illegal to do so.
I'm unfamiliar with US colleges, but could this just be a scheme to allow wealthy or well connected people to get into positions without the grades part? It would otherwise be pretty easy to show unjust discrimination if it were only grades being considered, but an applicant's 'diversity score' could mean anything, and is arbitrary on purpose to justify approving just about anybody.
Agreed, much like the "personality score" that Harvard notoriously used to the detriment of Asian applicants. It could very well also be that the children of wealthy donors just happen to have good personalities.
Prop 209 bans racial discrimination, but UC does it in hiring anyway through a number of means. For example, although Prop 209 bans taking race into account in the hiring decision, it doesn't ban taking it into account in earlier phases, like preparation of shortlists. If a department's shortlist for hiring a professor is found to have a bad proportion of under-represented minorities, the department can be punished by informal means such as being denied future hires. There are several other tricks that the administration does to promote race-based hiring and admissions, with the overall effect that Prop 209 is nullified through policies that are never put into writing.
Because it was used to achieve diversity goals, and 209 prevents that. Like the point made here[0], it's de-facto reparations by advantaging those who were/have been affected by lost generational wealth (unequal schools and racist HOA & loan policies). Whether or not this is the right way to go about it is indeed a split issue evidenced by the 57/43 2020 vote and 55/45 vote that passed the original 96 proposition.
> Like the point made here[0], it's de-facto reparations by advantaging those who were/have been affected by lost generational wealth (unequal schools and racist HOA & loan policies).
Reparations would at least be a coherent policy. But Prop 16 proponents also want the policies to favor Latinos, who given the demographics of California would by far be the primary beneficiary of such policies. But Latinos enjoy similar income mobility to whites. Favoring Latinos over whites isn’t “reparations” but just straight up racial discrimination. Ironically, Prop 16 was voted down in every single Latino-majority county in the state.
Ya, this is why I gave myself the out by saying it’s a divisive topic- a lot would be solved by having specifics for reparation laid out and a deadline for when such would end, but such a policy is likely to have so much against it (too much v not enough, general dissident for giving away money, whether or not it would even be legal on the basis of discrimination) that proxy bills that move the needle (somewhat) with (somewhat) negative side-effects are what we end up with.
If you’re going to discriminate based on skin color, it seems to me that a narrower policy that applies to the 6% of California that’s black would be an easier sell than a broader policy that ropes in the additional 40% that are Latino.
I think there’s a simpler explanation: most of the people behind Prop 16 are racist. Their only knowledge of race is the black-white dichotomy and they categorize Latinos as black for political purposes because that's the only framework they have for thinking about people with dark skin.
> Like the point made here[0], it's de-facto reparations by advantaging those who were/have been affected by lost generational wealth (unequal schools and racist HOA & loan policies).
Does anyone actually check whether recipients of these de facto reparation actually have been affected by any of that? As far as I can tell, nobody does, because nobody cares, it’s literally just based on the skin color.
The loss in generational wealth is effectively based on skin color. For example, in the 1930's, the Home Owner's Loan Corp. mapped out and literally redlined black areas, making it harder for homes to be bought and sold without paying extra in interest[0]. From Wikipedia[1]:
> The effects of redlining, as noted in HOLC maps, endures to the present time. A study released in 2018 found that 74 percent of neighborhoods that HOLC graded as high-risk or "hazardous" are low-to-moderate income neighborhoods today, while 64 percent of the neighborhoods graded "hazardous" are minority neighborhoods today. “It’s as if some of these places have been trapped in the past, locking neighborhoods into concentrated poverty,” said Jason Richardson, director of research at the NCRC, a consumer advocacy group.
The linked page[0] goes into more detail about how disastrous this was and the impact on wealth it has to this day. Considering how neighborhoods were even less integrated then than they are now, it's safe to say the correlation of redlining to skin color was very high.
> The loss in generational wealth is effectively based on skin color.
For many black skinned people in America, sure. For all? Certainly not. There are millions of African immigrants and their descendants in America, who have not experienced any of this. Does anyone bother to differentiate them from the American descendants of slaves? No, it really is all about skin color.
Except that some of the ethnic groups (Asian Americans) that are being discriminated against by this policy were also discriminated against by redlining back then.
>I'm unfamiliar with US colleges, but could this just be a scheme to allow wealthy or well connected people to get into positions without the grades part?
The "grades part"?
We are talking about academic positions here, not student applications.
It is not a suspicion, as suspicion would indicate there is a chance discrimination might not be happening; when d&i literally is discrimination, by definition.
It seems like you are expected, as a staff member in a position to influence the diversity of your workplace and of the students whose educational experience you exercise power over, to do so in a manner consciences of issues of diversity, not even just in general, but in the specific context of your job.
I mean, just for instance, a low '1' rank is described as, among other things: (*my emphasis*)
> Defines diversity only in terms of different areas of study or different nationalities, but doesn’t discuss gender or ethnicity/race. Discusses diversity in vague terms or platitudes. Does not provide any evidence of having informed themselves about diversity. *May discount the importance of diversity.*
I mean - yeah, I wouldn't want someone who fits that description being in charge of my education, or my kid's education - I wouldn't even want to be around a coworker who fits that description. I'm not even sure how well it would work trying to be friends with someone like that - I mean, in this day and age? How could you possibly excuse being so irresponsibly underinformed of such an important issue?
Compare that to a high '5' rank: (again *my emphasis*)
> Clear knowledge of experience with, and interest in dimensions of diversity that result from having URM identities. This understanding can result from personal experiences *as well as an investment in learning about the URM experiences of those with identities different from their own* ... Comfort discussing diversity-related issues (including distinctions and connections between diversity, equity, and inclusion), both in writing, and in a job talk session and one-on-one meetings with students, staff, and faculty.
I mean - that sounds really good doesn't it? Why shouldn't that skill set make someone a more attractive candidate to hire? Isn't that all good stuff that we would all benefit from more people being well-versed in? Doesn't demonstrating that well-versedness indicate a willingness to put the work in, as required to help actively oppose systemic oppression and bigotry? (as opposed to merely paying lip service to an ideal?)
I don't know a single person who has anything genuinely thoughtful or insightful to say on these topics that I would describe as "comfortable" discussing them in the current environment.
You'd have to be exceedingly naive to feel like you can include any amount of nuance into the prevailing narrative, let alone push back against it, without opening yourself up to a slew of mendacious attacks on your character. In many places you can, but within academia or certain corners of the media it's downright risky. There seems to be a rotating example of the day of poorly informed and hyper-reactive school administrators coming down hard on faculty based on nothing at all. Like most recently, the thing with the images of Muhammad being shown in an Islamic history seminar with warnings included in the syllabus and before the lecture being attacked as "Islamophobic."
Nobody is ever comfortable talking about this stuff unless they're up on the current jargon and issues and willing to parrot whatever the approved dogmas and shibboleths of the moment happen to be.
And yet plenty of people ranked high enough that they were hired. Just because you and the people you know wouldn’t have qualified, doesn’t meant that the qualification is unworthy.
I don’t personally know a single union master craftsman carpenter, but I have no problem acknowledging their existence, or their market value to employers. Why should this skill set be any different?
Yes all of the problems you mention are real - so why should an employer not specifically look to hire individuals who are equipped to face them? Like seriously, in what other industry would you protest the necessity of being conversant in applicable jargon? If I walk into a technical interview, and they ask me to use a ternary statement to assign an enum value to a constant based on whether the result of performing a spread operation on a collection of tuples yadda yadda yadda… do you really think my smug “I don’t keep up on shibboleths and dogma” is going to make me look like an appealing candidate?
They’re asking that applicants demonstrate their awareness of the current lay of the land when it comes to systemic oppression. Why should lack of awareness and lack of ability or willingness to engage with these issues be attractive when hiring? these are important issues, the handling of which are essential to the continued effort to reverse the effects of bigotry in our country. You might not want to do the work yourself, but that doesn’t mean the work doesn’t need to be done, and it doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there who are much better qualified than you and I to do it.
> They’re asking that applicants demonstrate their awareness of the current lay of the land when it comes to systemic oppression.
Because it's not the lay of the land when it comes to systemic oppression. It's the lay of the land as perceived by a clade of under-qualified and unaware administrative functionaries. These people are operating off vibes and public outcry, not any research or evidence backed understanding of history or sociology or policy analysis. The images of Muhammad example is a perfect case because that's exactly what happened. The DEI initiatives were used as a cudgel by the most extreme elements of Islamic movements to impinge on the academic freedom of the professor, and they just dressed up their highly conservative point of view in DEI jargon to manipulate the administration into taking action against her. But all the Muslims who did not agree with that perspective, as well as most scholars of Islamic history, had way more nuanced perspectives on the issue that agreed with the professor. This is basically just an instrument for the administration to erode worker power among an already beleaguered and exploited labor force.
It's also not really germane to most of their disciplines. It would be like asking a mathematician about their knowledge of epidemiology during the COVID pandemic. Why would I expect that of a mathematician? I expect them to do math and to follow whatever directives the public health experts tell them to.
I don't actually think conscripting random people whose core expertise is not policy or equity into doing bootleg equity initiatives are actually going to result in very good policies or a very accurate understanding of equity or diversity issues. I think what it actually ends up getting you is more people who operate off vibes and truthiness they picked up from social media instead.
The issue isn't that people care about diversity or equity, the issue is that this is done in such ham-fisted, lazy, and counterproductive ways. This all suggests they don't care enough about the thing in itself, they care about showing off that they're doing something so everything just revolves around optics instead of outcomes.
I've got opinions about the Muhamad picture incident, but just to check, we're talking about the one at Hamline University, right?
As to whether it's germane to their disciplines - my understanding is that it's germane because of the position they are in as educators, as employees of educational institutions, not because of their particular discipline. Of course you don't need to need to know anything about the modern concept of diversity to be a mathematician - you need that concept to be an effective teacher. Every one of those people in that class room is a whole person, with an entire life leading up to that day of attendance - "Why would I expect that of a mathematician?" - because you should expect that of everyone, but especially of people in positions of power, who have the ability to either reinforce or disrupt systems of oppression. That's the angle.
Me too - but crucially, that isn’t the way the world is right now. That’s what this criteria is about - not just viewing race as irrelevant, but being aware of all the unjust ways in which race has been made to be relevant, specifically so you know how to work to reverse that racist element. The thing about systemic racism is that it persists even after the founding racists are long gone - it’s self-perpetuating. It requires hard work and determination to dismantle.
It’s essentially the argument against “I don’t see colour” - the problem is that modern racists and the legacy of racism persists whether you see colour or not, and the targets of systemic oppression continue to experience repercussions whether you personally target them or not.
In other words, they don’t want employees to simply opt out of racism - that’s comparatively easy. They want employees to actively work against racism. That’s harder, and more worthy, and in my opinion worth actively seeking in new hires, especially in areas like education, politics, health and social services, and real estate that have an outsized impact on the accessibility of the American dream.
It’s not asking employees to pass a test to prove they’re not racist - it’s asking employees to be actively equipped to fight racism as part of their job description. Think of it like being hired for a UX/UI position - are you educated on Dark Patterns in user flows, and can you show experience in identifying and reversing them?
My feeling is the diversity statement would not be a good place to state your position on the controversy, so much as it would be a good place to demonstrate your understanding of the controversy itself. Your comment comes off as flippant dismissal, which I think we both know would not be received well.
I’m willing to bet 99% of the people commenting on this thread have never read a single diversity statement, let alone dozens. I’ve read many, and showing a basic understanding of the controversies and struggles is a good example of what you should do in a diversity statement. The high rate of rejections here come from people who don’t want to even think about diversity, and just want to do their research project. They write sarcastic, flippant, unserious and uninformed essays.
Unfortunately for them, the job includes teaching a diverse classroom, so applicants who don’t give serious consideration on how they will do a critical aspect of the job, or even what are the salient issues, are rejected. This is true of any job.
The opinion piece you cited made the mistake of citing its source.
It misrepresents what happened at Cal. Candidates were not rejected on the basis of their statement, which was merely one factor in scoring the 800+ candidates they interviewed.
> A total of 993 applications were received, of which 893 met basic qualifications. The LSI Committee conducted a first review and evaluated candidates based solely on contributions to diversity, equity and inclusion. Only candidates that met a high standard in this area were advanced for further review, narrowing the pool down to 214 for serious consideration.
What was misrepresented? "Evaluated solely on contributions to diversity, equity and inclusion [sic]" is not quite the same as evaluated solely on their diversity statement, but it doesn't seem too far off the mark. Aside from the candidates' diversity statement, how would the bureaucrats evaluate their "contribution to diversity, equity, and inclusion"?
As far as the effect on applicant demographics, here's the stats before the diversity evaluation / After diversity evaluation:
I note nothing in there about Rich / Poor or anything similar.
It's interesting (by which I mean utterly unsurprising and completely typical but in a revealing way) that social class and money are not considered for "diversity" and are, in fact, rather pointedly ignored. This debunks the whole thing, but I'm sure the proponents will be incapable of understanding why.
> The candidates were reviewed based on their "contributions to diversity, equity, etc." They were not reviewed based on their DEI statements.
And what does this mean, besides reviewing their DEI statements? We know that review of diversity statements are one component of this - you keep alluding to the notion that there's more to it than that, but neglect to actually provide any such example of how the universities measured this contribution besides their diversity statement.
> This is a fancy way of saying that they used affirmative action to advanced African American, Hispanic, and Native American candidates.
This is illegal in California. This is why people speculate that the review of diversity statements is a smokescreen for universities to illegally discriminate on the basis of protected classes.
> you keep alluding to the notion that there's more to it than that, but neglect to actually provide any such example of how the universities measured this contribution besides their diversity statement.
Many ways. For one there’s an interview where such topics can be probed. For another there are various talks given, where candidates can expand on their DEI activities. Finally there are grant applications and grant activities which relate to DEI that can be evaluated.
Considering affirmative action is explicitly illegal in California, I would hope that it wouldn't be the case of candidates being advanced solely by race, and that the diversity statements are what is being considered the 'contribution' here, unless there are some loopholes in the law that I'm not aware of.
In California, affirmative action is only illegal with respect to university admissions (meaning students), not with respect to hiring.
Race-conscious hiring is allowed if it would increase under-represented minorities. Whether you agree, or disagree with this policy (which I think most of us do), it is nonetheless legal in California, and it is what happened at the UC schools mentioned in the opinion piece you cited.
Fun fact: Berkeley and UCLA each employ more conservative professors than most "conservative" schools do. But they employ real conservatives, not the modern snowflake conservatives that constantly portrays themselves as victims.
Not good. For one, it's illegal to discriminate on the basis of race and gender. And second, contrary to what seems to men common belief, Asian and white people don't just have opportunities served up to them on a silver platter (in fact on the axis of gender, job opportunities have not only reached disparity but inverted: millennial and Gen Z women outperform their male counterparts). The academic job market could not be further from "innumerable additional opportunities."
This kind of comment serves as incredibly good ammunition for people looking to stir up racial resentment.
> in fact on the axis of gender, job opportunities have not only reached disparity but inverted: millennial and Gen Z women outperform their male counterparts
This is likely due to age. Things shift when women start having kids. What you observe is also true of childless women versus childless men of certain ages. It does not hold as broadly for women and men with children, in the same age range.
What you're referring to is the ongoing wage gap (women paid less than men) due to having time out to have kids.
The point being, women aren't paid less than men for no reason, just that they take time out to have children, that interruption is what leads to the pay gap.
> white and asian folks absolutely do have more opportunities than other racial groups, and that’s borne out over and over again, whenever people look into these kinds of things. If you look at academic outcomes, black, hispanic, native american groups are still substantially further behind than white and asian groups.
You haven't proven differential opportunity. You've only proven that some groups outperform other groups. You have not proven whether this is due to opportunities, discrimination, or hard work. Asian students, for example, spend more than 3x as much time studying as Black students.[1] Do you think there's a chance that this contributes to their higher representation at Caltech?
If your cultural group is substantially underrepresented in academia, why would you participate in academics? If you know the game is rigged against you, it’s perfectly reasonable not to play.
I wonder what black study rates would be if they were given the same chances as white and asian people are. Hopefully we’ll get there, but we’re still a long way off.
Indeed, Black Americans have suffered slavery and discrimination after emancipation. But is that the primary cause of the continued underperformance of African Americans into the 21st century? Plenty of peoples have come to America dispossessed, only to thrive and even exceed the average fortunes of white Americans - such as Cuban Americans like myself, Jewish people, and Asian Americans. African immigrants similarly excel, despite outwardly appearing the same as American born Black people. The difference is that we don't disempower these cultures by giving them lowered expectations: my parents never told me I should expect unequal treatment on account of my Latin heritage and I'd be insulted by anyone who would.
At this point, I doubt we'll make much progress toward resolving disparities in Black achievement without fostering equal investment in education in those communities. So long as Black students spend on average about half and one third as much time on homework as compared to white and Asian students respectively [1] the gaps academic performance aren't going anywhere. We can try to paper these over with more permissive expectations for admitting underrepresented students, but that has knock on effects: chiefly students admitted on account of affirmative action are less likely to major in STEM and more likely to drop out [2]. In this regard, affirmative action exacerbates underrepresentation in employment sectors as students that want to major in STEM are mismatched and change majors to graduate.
I'm honestly struggling to figure out how you think anyone who disapproves of racial discrimination is ignorant of slavery and the struggle for civil rights. Is your worldview really so narrow that you assume anyone who disapproves of racial discrimination is ignorant of slavery and anti-Black discrimination?
You keep citing this "hours of study" idea like I haven't already addressed it; when you see academic effort squashed by racism, it's no wonder at all that you stop studying. Fix racism in academia, fix the study gap, it's that simple.
Affirmative action does not exacerbate underrepresentation in employment sectors at all; if anything it improves representation, as more minority students are given a chance at completing college, which changes the makeup of eligible employees towards a more equitable mixture.
And I feel the need to remind you of slavery as you do seem wholly ignorant of its existence and further relevance to this topic. My citations are not generic "Slavery existed" citations, they're "slavery existed and to this very day has a gigantic impact on black people in academia. citations.
You are wrong, and harmfully so. You can continue to be wrong, but as long as you are, you also continue to be harmful.
> Fix racism in academia, fix the study gap, it's that simple.
If this were the case, the study gap would have disappeared decades ago. But it persists nonetheless. On second thought, you're probably right but not in the way you think: racial discrimination creates a lowered expectations for underrepresented groups and they put in effort accordingly.
> Affirmative action does not exacerbate underrepresentation in employment sectors at all; if anything it improves representation, as more minority students are given a chance at completing college, which changes the makeup of eligible employees towards a more equitable mixture.
Did you read the paper I linked? Probably not given that you responded 6 minutes after I posted the comment. Racial discrimination does increase representation, but it shifts the concentration of affected groups out of STEM and into less demanding majors. Before you try to blame this on racism inside the university, understand that the likelihood for students to graduate in STEM is the same across all races for the same level of academic preparedness. An Asian, white, Black, etc. student with 700s on their SAT are equally likely to graduate in STEM, as are students with 600s and 500s. An Asian student and a Black student with 700s on their SAT are just as likely to graduate in STEM. A white and Black student with 500s are less likely to graduate than the former two, but equally likely relative to each other. But due to affirmative action, there's a considerably greater share of black students in the latter situation. Worse yet, since these students often try and fail to graduate in their preferred field they take longer to graduate and come away with more student debt.
> You are wrong, and harmfully so. You can continue to be wrong, but as long as you are, you also continue to be harmful.
And I would say the exact same thing to you. You're wrong and harmfully so. The soft bigotry of low expectations is more subtle, but more insidious. Instead of pushing underrepresented students to invest more time into a academics and compete with their peers as equals, you're advocating that we simply lower standards. You can continue to be wrong, but as long as you are, you also continue to be harmful.
> Not only are you wrong, you're alone. Nearly nobody agrees with you who has worked in this space, the consensus is not on your side. Which is good for me and the push for equity, but is tiresome, cumbersome, and harmful in the meantime.
I find it odd that you don't even know the views of the people you're supposedly supporting. Nearly two thirds of Black people disagree with you. Yet you claim I'm alone in my views despite being in agreement with the majority of Black Americans.
> I always find it funny when people talk about "lowered expectations" Do you realize what you reveal about your own views when you say that? You're telling the world how you see minority groups as "lesser";
I agree: that's exactly why racial discrimination is counterproductive. Do you not see the message you're sending when you expect an Asian student to be in the top 5% and a Black student to be in the top 50% for the same role? Do proponents of affirmative action realize what this says about their views on Black people? And yes, discrimination of this magnitude are what universities are applying: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/06/23/a-lawsuit...
> Affirmative action does not exacerbate underrepresentation in employment sectors at all; if anything it improves representation, as more minority students are given a chance at completing college, which changes the makeup of eligible employees towards a more equitable mixture.
It creates mismatch. The result is predictable. The "beneficiaries" of affirmative action have lower GPAs and are less likely to complete STEM majors because they are outmatched by students for whom the admissions bar was not bent.
Does it increase representation? At a point in time, yes. But if the goal is to get folks into the executive suite, affirmative action may actually be a step backward.
No one denies that bad things were done to African Americans. We're trying to figure out what slavery or Jim Crow has to do with whether a Black student in 2023 decides to study or not.
My people have been oppressed for centuries. Most people come from people that have been oppressed for centuries. It doesn't factor into how much I study.
You should check out John McWhorter, who has a very different take on what it is to grow up Black these days. I have no idea whether you're Black, or how old you are. But the characterization you give is out of step with what a lot of people perceive. Folks like John find these sort of descriptions borderline offensive. Also demoralizing to Black kids, who shouldn't be told that the world is more awful than it actually is.
Except hard work will help you succeed academically if you're black. In fact, it'll help you a lot more than if you're Asian or white. A Black applicant in the top 9th decile academically has over 50% chance of being admitted to Harvard, as compared to under 10% for an Asian student with the same academic achievement: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/06/23/a-lawsuit...
If what you are saying were true we should be seeing Asians spending the least time studying and Black students studying hard. But your hypothesis is not only untrue, it's the opposite of what we actually observe.
Yeah but getting to that level despite all of the shit holding black people (and other minority groups) back is insanely hard. So yeah, once you're there it probably gets a bit easier, but getting there is nearly impossible.
What we do see are the systemic effects of an entire society normalizing a whole host of racist behaviors, including trying to play the struggle Olympics by comparing one racial group (who have a whole different set of issues) to another.
Comparing racial groups' admissions prospects isn't racist. It's just inconvenient to your narrative that Black students aren't rewarded by academic success because it so starkly demonstrates that it's not only untrue, but the opposite of true. A Black student needs to be squarely in the middle of the pack to have the same admissions chances as an Asian student in the top 10%. I'm baffled as to how you can convince yourself that Black students aren't rewarded for academic success - it's greater reward for the same level of academic success.
Your who premise that Black students are not rewarded for academic success - which other commenters asked you to substantiate and you refused [1] - is untrue, and you've resorted to accusations of racism instead of trying to argue your point.
I didn't say it was racism, I said it was bad logic. If there is an issue giving black people opportunities, it makes no sense to only measure the black people who already find their way into success despite the hurdles.
That literally does not make sense logically.
And I didn't refuse to do shit, I literally gave a dozen sources that all support my claim that black people have a whole host of things working against them when it comes to performing well academically. I disagreed that I haven't "proven" what I claimed when I very clearly and undeniably did exactly that.
What evidence do you have that hard work won't help you succeed academically today? Plenty of minority students have succeeded in academics through hard work. And how is that Asians managed to avoid this problem as a group? They didn't face any discriminitation?
And my grandparents either didn't live within 1,000 miles of me or died before the 3rd grade. Yet I learned algebra all the same.
Your links don't actually substantiate the claim that you're making. That's why people keep asking you to substantiate the claims that you're making about lower reward for the same level of academic success, and why your continuous referral back to these links is pointless. And now you're resorting to flagging comments because you can't refute them.
If my comments are so toxic, the correct course of action as per the HN guidelines is to not respond - which you have evidently not done.
> I didn't once call anyone here a racist person.
Yes, you did, here [1]
> What we do see are the systemic effects of an entire society normalizing a whole host of racist behaviors, including trying to play the struggle Olympics by comparing one racial group (who have a whole different set of issues) to another.
You wrote this in response to my comparison of Asian and Black admission rates, in response to your claim that Black people are not rewarded for academic success. In your response explicitly called the comparison of racial groups racist. Sure, you didn't call me racist. You just called what I did in the previous comment racist - as though I can't connect the dots.
The whole point of this thread is that black kids don't try to study because of past racism.
You now want to tell black kids that everything's shit so there's no point trying, then point to the inevitable result of that lack of effort as racism? Are you not the racist?
Society? You tell me. They aren't getting the grades because they aren't studying. They aren't studying because.....?
You atleast appear to support this 'truth' telling, regardless of the self fulfilling outcome.
Sorry what? That's not how affirmative action works at all, you have to be qualified for a given spot, the whole point is that there are way too many qualified candidates as it is.
Go commented:
> Asian students, for example, spend more than 3x as much time studying as Black students.[1] Do you think there's a chance that this contributes to their higher representation at Caltech?
To which you replied:
>If your cultural group is substantially underrepresented in academia, why would you participate in academics? If you know the game is rigged against you, it’s perfectly reasonable not to play...
So are they expected to 'play the game' or not?
Define qualified? If a get an E (technically a pass) am I 'qualified' to the same extent as someone with an A?
If I get my basic baseball proficiency badge does that allow me to play against the best baseballers the world has to offer? Just because of my race?
Further. You do understand the future danger of all this? If I'm looking to hire graduates and I know the black kids had an easier time getting in. If I want the best im better off not looking at the black kids. Their piece of paper is worth less.
Plus you're infantalising them. They should be getting there on their own merits. If they aren't doing the work to get the grades, that issue should be addressed, not papered over.
Black kids didn't have an easier time getting in, it's a lot harder for a black person to get to the place where they're even being considered for a prestigious college than it is for you to get to that place.
If you see a black person with an education from an institute like Harvard, you should think about the additional work they had to do to get there.
And by the way, those kids get the grades necessary to attend these schools. Why would you presume they don't?
But the whole point is that others have been putting in more effort thus the better outcomes.
Your position is/was that black kids put in less effort because racism.
So if black kids are putting in less effort because racism how can you then say they're putting in more work.
If they're trying and not getting in then that's something universities should be doing something about. If they aren't putting in the work universities shouldn't just be expected to accept lower grades. And the solution lies elsewhere.
You can't have it both ways. Either theres no point trying because the game is rigged. Or they're putting in more effort to get to the same position. If the latter then challenge the GPs assertion, instead of tacitly accepting it by saying that black kids aren't trying.
If you actually read the thread we are in, the reply this is under, which I have requoted, you will see this is on relation to education and study time.
Are you claiming revising for an exam doesn't lead to better outcomes?
> Yes good, because white and asian folks absolutely do have more opportunities than other racial groups, and that’s borne out over and over again, whenever people look into these kinds of things. If you look at academic outcomes, black, hispanic, native american groups are still substantially further behind than white and asian groups.
Group A outperforming Group B does not mean that Group A is being given unfair opportunities. It certainly doesn't justify intentionally, and illegally, giving Group B undeserved opportunities to the detriment of Group A.
It absolutely does mean that group A is being given more opportunities than group B when you realize there is no difference biologically between group A and group B.
Yes, in a world where those two groups have the exact same make up, it would mean that. That's not true at all in this context. There are differences between racial groups. No one is shocked and appalled that Jewish people are hugely over represented as Nobel prize winners, or that black people are wildly over represented in professional sports. It's difficult to disentangle what is just cultural impact, but they're patterns that a child could identify.
If you work from a false premise, you end up with false results. The motivation behind the desire to believe that everyone is equally capable at everything is a good one, and individuals should be treated as if they have equal potential regardless of their immutable characteristics. It would be great if all groups were great at everything. If it were possible, I would make it so. However, falling prey to treating "ought" as "is" leads to pathological behaviors, which is exactly what is happening to the well-intentioned members of this movement.
This is not true, genetically, and if you believe there is, that's a real problem for you.
As for the differences in these communities as a result of differing treatment by others, you're damn right there are differences, and to the degree that those differences are caused by discrimination and hatred (and it's a high degree), that's exactly what we're trying to slowly improve.
The problem with your egalitarian vision is that not everyone starts out on the same level, and if you ignore the systemic ways people are held back, you ruin any shot you might have at getting the end goal you seem to want, which seems to be "may the best person win".
We all want that end result, but until you deal with reality, that's never going to happen.
And why do those cultural differences exist? What bonds "black people" together in American culture, despite coming from a whole host of diverse places that otherwise share little to no culture amongst one another?
>...ways of using the statements by reading them _prior_ to any other components of the application, scoring them using a rubric of their choice, and deciding which applicants to consider further using the entirety of the application. Exercising their discretion, faculty on some committees elected to move most applicants forward, while others (especially from the large colleges) preferred to continue with less than 50% of the original applicant pool.
So based solely on the DEI statement, some have rejected over 50% of applicants without taking the rest of the application into consideration.
In other words, UC Berkeley rejected 76 percent of qualified applicants without even considering their teaching skills, their publication history, their potential for academic excellence or their ability to contribute to their field. As far as the university knew, these applicants could well have been the next Albert Einstein or Jonas Salk, or they might have been outstanding and innovative educators who would make a significant difference in students’ lives.
Welcome to the historical experience of numerous underprivileged people who were excluded through no fault of their own. But since DEI statements can be rewritten at any time, applicants are not stuck with the prospect of permanent exclusion.
I am not a fan of college administrators in general, nor of the heavy-handed bureaucratic approach described here. But administrators are looking for faculty who can produce more distinguished grads in the future, who might be 'the next Albert Einstein or Jonas Salk'. You could be an outstanding brain in your field, but if you're not interested in maximizing the search for undiscovered talent, are you likely to attract it to your school?
> Welcome to the historical experience of numerous underprivileged people who were excluded through no fault of their own.
Emphasis on historical. You have to make sure not to swing the pendulum too far, otherwise you'll just end up creating a new generation of aggrieved people. Especially if your actions are themselves illegal.
The suspicion is that inclusion of these diversity statements in the hiring process is a way to stealthily discriminate on the basis of race when it is ostensibly illegal to do so.