
The Affirmative Action Blues - exolymph
https://www.facebook.com/glenn.loury1/posts/1433339190111822
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thaumasiotes
> No one who is concerned about the well-being of black students, in the legal
> academy or elsewhere, should welcome public scrutiny of the relative
> academic performance of those black students who are benefiting from the
> practice of affirmative action at elite universities! And yet, this is what
> the pillorying of Amy Wax will surely lead to. I promise you, as someone who
> knows a thing or two about what's going on at the most selective academic
> institutions in this country, no good can come of that.

I'd kind of like to know what _would_ come from that, and how it would be
detrimental to "the well-being of black students".

~~~
csense
Basically, there are two different explanations for why black students find it
hard to get into college.

(1) Racism. The white people in charge of college admissions just don't like
black people, and let too few of them into college.

(2) Performance difference. Black students, on average, are less academically
capable than white students.

A person who truly believes in meritocracy would say that if the explanation
is (1), then it's an institutional problem that needs an institutional
solution which involves supporting or boosting black students in some way. If
the explanation is (2), then it's a problem with the individual student; black
students need to improve their average level of study skills, talent,
maturity, preparation, hard work, and all the other things that go into
academic success.

The author's saying that he believes the evidence, in the form of grades by
race, points toward explanation (2). If this is the case, and that evidence
becomes public, meritocrats will turn against programs that help black
students. Since they want to protect students from racism, but (by the
definition of meritocracy) don't want to protect students from the
consequences of their inability to perform academically, even if that means
certain racial groups become underrepresented.

~~~
nothrabannosir
That might actually be what Loury was getting at (I was honestly as surprised
as OP at that line). However, there does seem to be a third, midway option,
which the author even alludes to: black people have been socially and
economically disadvantaged for centuries (to put it mildly), resulting in
overrepresentation in lower socio economic groups. _That_ , in turn, would
lead to lower academic performance (regardless of race), because of less
support and encouragement from the environment. In broad strokes: Option 3 is
a combination of 1 (but societal, not just in academics), leading to 2 (but
correlation, not causation).

The idea of affirmative action then (assuming #3) being: giving black people
more space in the academic race will eventually help break that chain.

There are a lot of assumptions here, but I don’t see how this would be
incongruous with either the author’s earlier statements or affirmative action
as a whole.

However I doubt this is actually true, because the author (an expert, unlike
me) seems to know something I don’t.

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devnull791101
Policies of equality of outcomes are inherently discriminatory. If black
people are positively discriminated for then asians are being negatively
discriminated against. Since spaces in college are limited when you give one
space to someone you take it away from another.

