Tom Toles for April 24, 2014

Libs want people to earn things they don’t deserve or didn’t work hard for based only on their race, instead of working hard, applying yourself, etc etc etc. Why do that if instead you just get to a job placed at a college as you edge out someone more QUALIFIED that they are just because they AREN’T of a certain race? There’s a phrase for that: Reverse Discrimination!

Wow…before you berate me for not being smart enough….try learning how to SPELL college, you misspelled it TWICE! Then, learn how to use the proper usage of your and you’re. They’re (not there, or their), NOT interchangeable!

In considering college admissions, should other factors than academic merit of the candidate be considered? Such as the wealth (or lack thereof) of his family? The fact that his parents are alumni of the college, or have never been to college? The fact that he is a fine athlete and would be an asset to the college’s team? The fact that he is a he and not a she? The fact that he has, by sheer grit, overcome great obstacles to get where he is? Who shows greater promise, the runner who comes in first, or the one who comes in a few seconds behind him with 5-pound weights on each ankle?In the this country today, black kids face barriers and carry burdens white kids don’t, even if it is better than it used to be. That is simply a fact, and ignoring it won’t make it go away, pretending it isn’t true anymore won’t make it go away. Taking that fact into account is in no way unfair or unjust. Letting that fact trump all other facts IS unfair and unjust. The Michigan law that was upheld bans the former practice, not just the latter.If demonstrated academic merit were the ONLY thing governing college admissions, then fewer rich kids, fewer athletes, and many fewer boys would get into college, or at least into the college of their choice. Kids that had the misfortune to attend average schools would have little chance against those who had the advantage of high-price prep schools and other privileges. And even academic merit is terribly hard to measure. A kid from a great school with a 3.0 gpa may be much better than a kid from a mediocre school with a 4.0 gpa. And standardized tests are hardly infallible.There are many kinds of “affirmative action” in play. Colleges prefer to have a rough boy-girl balance, they think it benefits everyone. So they admit boys with lower gpas and test scores than they do girls. Where is the outrage over that? Colleges think that all students will benefit by attending a college whose student body looks like America, and whose students have a variety of experiences to bring to the classroom. But bigots only want that student body to look like one part of America, and have one way of thinking and doing.Interestingly, California, some years ago, banned racial quotas and the like in the admission policies of its colleges. The result was a small decline in the number of black students AND a large decline in the number of WHITE students, and a great increase in the number of Asian students.Michigan has made a bone-headed law that does nothing but take from college admissions offices one of the tools used to judge a candidate’s merits. Yes it is a blunt and inexact tool, but it was not used in isolation. And let’s make one thing very clear: the Supreme Court has not declared the Michigan law to wise or just, they have merely declared it to be legal. Not the same thing at all.“This case is not about how the debate about racial preferences should be resolved,” Anthony Kennedy wrote, in an opinion joined by Roberts and Alito. “It is about who may resolve it."

Oh, c’mon everybody … let’s lay off of @PianoGuy24 … After all, he’s just a Troll (and a white one, I’d suspect) so he can’t help himself from spewing trollish jargon. Besides, he knows the difference between “there,” “their” and “they’re.” That has to count for something. Attaboy, Mr. PianoGuy24!

Affirmative action was intended to be a legal bias to help people of color play catch up in a world where they had been badly discriminated against. It was never intended to give a permanent advantage. The world has changed a lot. Discrimination of all kinds still happens and it affects many different people but the playing field is a lot more level that it used to be. A black kid with good grades and a solid work ethic will be able to succeed. A white kid who has lousy grades and sucks at getting anything done won’t.

@Ted LindWell Said!!!!!

Whatever……..As soon as you use “Nazi” you lose the conversation…

Ah! Another lovely long, elegant essay by Doughfoot! THIS is why I read these comments. Thank you, Doughfoot, for your erudition, your insight, (and your spelling and grammar!) And, for those who think I’m being sarcastic, you’re wrong.

I was agreeing with you there up until you gave a straw man example. The intent of affirmative action is to provide, technically, a counter to existing, negative bias. In other words, it is a corrective to bias rather than bias in and of itself.I agree that it can be good or bad (bias is not inherently negative, whereas typically prejudice is).But the proper example is that there is bias in the environment BECAUSE given three students with equivalent ability, one will be less likely to be picked.Now: people of color tend to score lower on many standardized tests (not all), because of incremental societal bias. People of color are more likely to be in lesser quality schools. Americans tend to be biased against picking people of color for certain jobs – which also means students may miss out on more prestigious opportunities. Cumulatively, this can produce a significant disparity where none should exist, even though every bit of it is minor — because all the biases go the same direction.Affirmative action is a means to correct this. It may not be the best means. To me, if you want to correct the problem you need to go to the root cause, meaning to fix the biases at every step and provide truly equal opportunity wherever possible. Affirmative action is really an after-the-fact brute-force corrective to make up for a host of biases of varying sizes.However, I haven’t heard any proposals for anything better.The problem with the Supreme Court decision is that it undercuts the only tool really being used. If we have no means to make an assessment truly race-blind, then existing bias will rule. Since there IS known, existing bias, Roberts’ decision is either stunningly naive, ignorant, or racist. Possibly all three.

With respect, you use an ellipsis in your sentence that contains more than 3 dots (or periods). Should I thus remove consideration of your point? If we understand someone’s point, perhaps that is the most important aspect of communication, not the imperfect vessel in which it is delivered.

@TheTrustedMechanic

I always ignore spelling errors UNLESS I’m being called a moron by somebody that can’t spell. Get it…?

Why do so many think that minorities are unable to compete in today’s world, and need special treatment? I view THAT thinking as prejudicial. Does somebody really think that, if a member of a minority gets a degree based on lower standards being held for them (special treatment), that they have achieved equally as well or as much as members of the majority who got the same degree?

One of us is misconstruing the Michigan law that was upheld. I understand the law to ban the use of race as a factor in determining college admissions. You say it bans the use of race as a determining factor in college admissions. Here’s my question: If a pair of applications are being considered, and an admissions office says, “Student X has grades as good as student Y, but student X has lower test scores. Both come from working class home and parents who didn’t go to college, both have good letters of recommendation, and both wrote good essays; but Y comes from a quiet rural town in Kansas where he enjoyed a lot of security and support, and accomplished what he did without much effort; X came from a inner city black community with high rates of violence and unemployment, drug use, and poverty. He had to fight like hell to get where he is, and I think he would make a better student that Y would.” Isn’t he breaking the Michigan law by allowing student X’s racial background to influence his choice? The problem is that this issue is often framed as “all other things and factors being equal should race be the determining factor”? The problem is that “all other things and factors” are NEVER equal.

“Discrimination in any form is wrong.”

You have to choose between two candidates for a slot. You can flip a coin, or you can look at their qualifications. Choosing between them based on their merits is discriminating between them. A “discriminating palate” is not an unjust one. Even so, I understand, “discrimination” has come to mean UNFAIR, or baseless discrimination. And I agree, that is wrong. Now we come to the questions of race. Geneticists will tell you that there is no such thing. Race is at most a cluster of traits that often occur together, but there is actually no genetic way to draw a line between on so-called “race” and another. It is a cultural construct that only exists because we think it does. And the fact it, we DO think it does. Our culture is saturated with it, and our history more so. And we use it as short-hand for other things. We don’t call the albino offspring of black parents “white”. We don’t call a white man black because he spends so much time in the sun that his skin is brown. African-Americans don’t even like calling African immigrant African-Americans, they are so culturally different from black Americans. In practice, we use “race” as short-hand for complex social phenomena. It isn’t precise, that is true, but it isn’t useless either. Black people do experience life in this country differently than white people do. Taking that into account when judging their merits is not necessarily unjust or unfair. People talk about affirmative action as those it were a simple practice of giving people “extra points” for having extra melanin in their skin. That isn’t the way it is done in college admissions offices.

I think you’re missing the point. DNA can reveal ethnic heritage. There are colors that are red and colors that are blue, but there are also shades in between that we call purple. There is no line in nature where one color ends and another begins, there is no line in nature where one race ends and another begins either. The president’s DNA would reveal that he has black ancestors and white ancestors, but who is to say which race he belongs to? He is black because our history, our culture and our assumptions make him so. Read a account written by a mixed-race woman. In her white-bread school she was “the black girl.” When she went to visit her relatives in Africa, the people in their town called her “the white woman.”

BTW Doughfoot, not trying to pick on you, just found your posts easiest to reference for further conversation.

What post is PG24 referring to? I can’t find it. I want to read the point he was making. Also, whenever I hear a term such as ‘grammar Nazi’ I am reminded of Seinfeld and the ‘soup Nazi.’