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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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My bet would be approximately the same, with some deviations to account for the changing racial makeup of high school graduates. You'll probably see more people who currently identify as white instead identify as Hispanic/Latino, because everyone will know that AA is still widely used under the table.

Black or African American

This categorization always irks me. For Harvard in particular, a huge proportion (40% as of 2004, though they don't make these numbers readily available and it's hard to find more recent ones) of its Black students are international or first generation immigrants. This is weird given some of the common justifications for AA, particularly the "it's to make up for slavery" one. That's not to say the international ones don't deserve to be there; in my freshman dorm at a similar institution, they comprised about half the Black students and largely outperformed the ADOS half. But if I were ADOS, I'd be pretty pissed about Harvard trying to whitewash (blackwash?) its numbers by that particular grouping.

ETA my actual guess: 43% white, 19% Asian, 15% multiracial, 10% black, 4% South Asian, 8% Latino, 1% native or pacific.

Its my understanding that certain black immigrant groups like Nigerians are highly successful, on par with Asians and Jews. So, its not surprising they would be overrepresented. I would sat this is actually semi-good as it means Harvard is at least treating black applicants internally-meritocratically even while discriminating against other racial groups.

Just to clarify you mean that they are to Blacks what Jews and Asians are to whites; not that they are otherwise are not comparable to Jews or Asians? I would agree.

This is weird given some of the common justifications for AA, particularly the "it's to make up for slavery" one.

It isn't at all weird, because that is not a legal justification for affirmative action, and has not been for at least 20 years. Rather, schools can employ "narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body." Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 US 306, 343 (2003). So, it makes perfect sense.

Perfect sense? Yeah if you buy that bullshit I guess. What educational benefits flow from a student body that all thinks the exact same way but is superficially “diverse”? If anything grads these days are dumber than ever, that’s what comes from ignoring g factor in admissions