This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Looks like the Supreme Court is finally getting around to challenging affirmative action. Of course we don't know what the ruling will be, but with the decisions so far I'm hopeful they strike down AA, or at least put a dent in it.
I'm surprised this isn't a bigger deal as I haven't heard much buzz about it from my liberal friends. According to the article, 74% of Americans don't believe in using race as a factor in college admissions (although that question and whether or not Affirmative Action should be struck down likely have far different approval rates.) It may be a Roe situation where they really don't care until one of the sacred cows is gored because they believe in their own invincibility. I'm curious if AA does get struck down, will we have the same reaction as Roe?
I'm sure some people will be upset, but do you think liberal states will start changing their constitutions to allow race filtering for college admissions? Or is the political will for AA just gone on both sides of the aisle?
Prop 209 passed in 1996. Are you really arguing that a one year increase, 25 years later, is evidence that they are cheating somehow? What took them so long?
And, btw, the easiest way to increase black student admissions at Berkeley is to encourage them to apply to the College of Letters and Sciences, rather than to one of the more competitive colleges
I would say that's evidence, yes, but far from the best evidence. It's easily dwarfed by the absolute mountain of evidence uncovered by Prof. Sander at UCLA that the UCs were comprehensively violating Prop 209 since shortly after it was passed, and that evidence was covered up by UC Admissions while the UC Administrations told massive straight-face lies for the next decade or two.
One of the methods was using multi-pass evaluation of admissions packets where the first pass sorted into "admit/marginal/no admit." For some odd reason, when the second pass went through the "marginal" category, 75%+ of black applicants got an admissions offer, and approximately 0% of white and Asian students were accepted.
I knew some black students in the UCs that went there well after Prop 209, but before Prof. Sander's discoveries. They expressed bitterness that they were seen as affirmative-action students, despite Prop 209 clearly making racial preferences illegal. "Unjustified racism," they called it. And yet they'd been betrayed, and the suspicions of the "racists" were actually correct. They did get in under lower admission standards.
I think you are overstating your case here. It is clear that Prop 209 did have a major effect on admissions in the UC system. For example, you can see here that the number of black freshmen students at Berkeley fell by about 50% from 1997 to 1998 (the first year the new rules were in effect) from 6-7% of new freshmen to 3-4%. I believe that the UC system did try to circumvent Prop 209 in various ways and may have become more effective at this over time, but claiming that "UCs were comprehensively violating Prop 209 since shortly after it was passed" doesn't seem correct.
Before Prop 209, the UCs used particular metrics and methods to preferentially boost black admissions to UCs. Then Prop 209 mandated an end to racial preferences, and decreed that admissions should be race-blind. After Prop 209, the UCs covertly used different methods some of which I specifically described to boost black admissions, in violation of Prop 209, and conducted a massive coverup of their illegal behavior. I'm not evaluating the post-Prop 209 behavior on the basis of statistical analysis; I'm talking about the actual behavior that Prof. Sander uncovered.
That the post-Prop 209 methods produced fewer black admissions to the UCs than the pre-Prop 209 methods is an interesting point in itself, but it's not a counter to what I wrote.
I didn't claim that the UC system made no attempts to circumvent Prop 209, only that these attempts, at least for the first decade after Prop 209, did not manage to bring admissions numbers close to where they were before Prop 209. That seemed to contradict the phrase "comprehensively violating Prop 209" but perhaps we interpret the word "comprehensively" differently.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link