Schools have to be more subtle and hide behind vague criteria and language.
I think to make it fair asking race or gender should be illegal. That way everyone is judged equally. Activities could be grouped as sport, music, art, club, etc. That way the names of the specific activity aren’t used, and they don’t give away demographic info. Then we’d have true fairness regardless of race or gender. Of course, the people claiming the want equality would never agree to that, since equality isn’t what they want.
I liked the way you subtly changed the tone. Earlier you sounded so emphatic that SCOTUS has ruled race-based admissions illegal. Thanks. Anyway, I am not clear how repealing proposition 209 ( a ban on affirmative action ) helps California become a better economy. Repealing Prop 209 will promote mediocrity in colleges and universities.
Companies like Google, Facebook, Intel, Microsoft get Billions of dollars worth of tax credits. Still they operate pretty much as they like. They hire and fire at will. The private and govt agencies do not have same obligation. None of the social media companies follow the First Amendment of the constitution of the USA even though they operate from the jurisdiction of the USA.
BTW, MIT did hire a professor who turned out to be 0.000000001 % native American. This person has been lying from the day one to benefit from Affirmative Action, and was also a very strong likely Presidential nominee of the democratic party.
Private business and political parties do what is in their best interest.
Some private groups may not be even open to everyone.
Public education funded with tax payers money like those with UCs and California State Universities cannot discriminate on the basis of race or demographics of the candidate.
They hire/fire anybody at will, EXCEPT for the reasons prohibited by the law. According to the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, race is one of the factors that can not be used to justify employment.
Tech is generally more meritocratic, yes. But it’s part of society not the whole society. It can only take as input what society at large feeds it. If you feed it systematic biases, at 100% meritocracy the output would still have those same biases.
Taking race into consideration in college admission and government employment is a dangerous slippery slope. It might be reasonable to consider social economic background in college admission but giving preference based on race will only hurt unity of our society.
ACA-5’s proposal to legalize racial preferences erodes America’s fundamental principles of equal opportunity, merit and individual liberty.
Racial or any other identity preference also erodes principles of natural justice by taking away an opportunity from more deserving person and giving it to less deserving person. ACA 5 is bad for California and everyone else.
It depends on what the goal is, as “more deserving” or “less deserving” are all subjective. One would think that universities should admit the best (highest-scoring → highest potential) students to maximize the value that the university education provides, which might be the goal before, but things are definitely changing now. These educational institutions are now part of the mechanism to help balance the inequalities in the society, and the previous goal is no longer the highest priority. By admitting more of these “less deserving” students who may or may not even be able to finish the program and graduate, the whole society will be one step closer to the new goal. Of course if measured by the previous goal these universities will gradually become less competitive thus less desirable, but it doesn’t matter in the eyes of the people who value the new goal.
It’s the same thing at the national level. Part of the reason the US is the most powerful nation in the world is precisely because it’s not as socialistic as the other developed countries. By allowing the cruel capitalism to run its course, it provides motivation for people who are capable to seek a better life for themselves. It does, however, bring more inequalities to the society by design. By evening out the inequalities, the new goal will kill/reduce motivation and cause the nation to lag behind. But that is by design too. People who value addressing inequalities more will not cry at the idea that the US will cease to be the superpower it used to be, because that is no longer the goal, and that’s ok.
It’s all about priorities. Nobody is stupid. People who are making these moves know exactly what the consequences are, but they make those choices anyway. But the problem is once you are on this path, there is no turning back. You cannot only go as far as you would like but not all the way. That would be super hypocritical. Some people complain about minorities having un-proportional representation in prisons, then the question is what should the correct ratio be? So if one agrees with ACA-5, then what is the reason the selection process of who goes to prison should not be based on races too? If some races are under-represented in prisons should the society put more people of that race in prison to make the numbers “match” regardless of whether they committed any crime? If you really want equality everywhere, in the end it might not look like something you would expect and would be able to accept. But then you can’t choose this path only when it’s convenient. It’s a matter of principles, you know.
I am not in favor of ACA-5, but any discussion of it needs to be mindful of the fact that in vast majority of states there are NO outright bans of affirmative action in college. So arguments saying this will lead to decline of America is taking it too far, unless you equate California with America.
If UC’s should just aim for taking in the best of the best, then we should not reserve any quota for local Californian kids and should take in the most talented kids anywhere in the world. But most Californians don’t think that’s such a great idea. That’s the first indication that there are other social needs we want our public colleges to address besides taking in the best students.
Who is paying for the UCs? Most of the funding for the UCs come from the California tax payers. The California taxpayers naturally have right to demand admissions.
The purpose of universities is to give education. I am not aware that universities are set up for some social engineering.
By keeping deserving students out and taking underserving students in, everyone will be worse off.
Please do not confuse yourself. People are not sent to prison for their race or identity. People are sent to prison after they have been sentenced in the court of the law for the illegal activities
Do you want to do injustice to a deserving person and than put a nice wrap on it?