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Why YSK: because what seems like equal situation from surface isn’t always equal opportunity for all. And even when equal measure of help is provided, it might not be equally useful.
Its the equity stage. Certain socioeconomic groups have fewer educational opportunities earlier in life. We should really move on to justice and fix that. But first, we need equity to help people now and make up for that.
We have need based programs to address people who need help. Why not bolster to those? Why focus on shifting resources/programs away from the poor to people who objectively don’t need it as much? We know how much people need, we can measure income.
How much money/time/reaources are going into programs, grants, scholarships that target single demographics?
We should certainly be helping the poor universally. Education should be free. Food should be a basic human right.
But, racism is well and alive in modern society. And it actively pushes people down based on race. So, we should address both issues.
I noticed that when I was trying to apply for scholarships.
And yet, you still have a statically better chance at upward mobility than the people who obtained these scholarships. And, don’t get me wrong. I’m white from a poor background with a lot of student loan debt. I feel your pain. But I’m not interested in fighting other poor people for scraps. Education should be free. We should be asking the wealthy and powerful why they are keeping education and other resources artificially difficult to obtain. Why is education and health care only this expensive in the US compared to other western and developed countries?
You mean people of my skin color have a statistically better chance. You don’t know me though, or how I was raised or whether or not I had two, one, or zero active parents in my life. Or their income, whether or not we owned a car, had proper access to food. factors like these are what we should be measuring, but today, skin color trumps all to most institutions.
I’m not asking for anything for me. I want people to be treated fairly. I want systematic means of discrimination destroyed, not constructed. Racism, racial tensions, bigotry are empowered by creating racially targeted policies.
No objection to your points on the ultra wealthy.
You’re right. I don’t know you. I assumed you aren’t black due to context. Perhaps you are native, but that’s the only group that is statistically less likely to have upward mobility compared to black people. But I haven’t really made any other assumptions other than you’re probably not part of a group getting race based scholarships thus you are part of a group statistically more likely to have more upward mobility than groups that do get race based scholarships. I think that’s a fair contextual assumption. And I don’t feel like playing the oppression Olympics with you, I just was trying to explain my position and that I have no benefit in defending affirmative action.
People should be treated fairly. We agree there. But, they aren’t right now. The bonus that certain groups get in admissions is to counterbalance more impactful lost opportunities they had earlier in life. And, until we address those, the counterbalance is necessary. But, you don’t seem to actually care about people being treated fairly at all stages. You only seem to care about people being treated fairly at stages that may give others opportunities you don’t have.
Because, if you actually cared about the root of the issue then your argument wouldn’t be focused on anti-affirmative action but realistically on creating a system that is equal from birth to death for all of us. Instead, you play into the desires of the ultra wealthy which is to create race based animosity to prevent either group from working together. Instead of arguing to lift others up so they don’t need affirmative action in the first place, you decide to squabble over peanuts in the dirt with over some false perception that someone else might be getting a few more crumbs than you.
That’s horseshit. Some poor person living right next door to some other poor person has access to X scholarship but the neighbor doesn’t. They went to the same schools growing up. Their parents make comparable money, but magically only one of them could get a free ride scholarship or gets easier access to school.
That’s not going to breed resentment. Nooo. Not at all.
What’s the differing factor between them?
Obviously if you paint this hypothetical situation as between two identical parties it’ll look silly. What do you think would differentiate the two enough to warrant a scholarship difference?
Because money doesn’t cover the whole issue. Two people starting at the same economic point, one is statistically more likely to have downward economic mobility compared to the other based on race. There are people in our society actively being held back.
You’re missing the larger point. It isn’t about individuals.
If your parents and grandparents were from an ethnic/social/other group that did not have access to resources, then there’s less chance that you grow up in a household that values education or have resources like food, time with parents and caring adults, emotional support and, financial security and so on. These affect your academic success irrespective of how talented or smart you might be.
Providing better access to higher education for people from such groups is a way to make sure that their children don’t grow up in the same environment and the problem is solved over generations.
Such measures of equity are always stop gap measures to address problems until you find grass root level solutions. Right now say protected groups might be first Nations or African Americans. In the future that might change to immigrants from Ukraine or Honduras.
It IS about the individual and claiming otherwise completely misses the damn point.
No one from a similar economic level living in a similar area has more advantages than anyone else. To claim otherwise is both racist and simply wrong and speaks to the tone-deaf nation of certain groups in this country.
Continuing down that erroneous path only breeds contempt for those who get preferential treatment because of something totally outside of their control.
If you think Beyonce’s kids (she’s worth $1/2 BILLION) are somehow downtrodden and being discriminated against more than some poor Asian family who just came to the US and are barely scraping by, then you are part of the problem as to why racism in this country seems to never go away. You are blindly focusing in on something as pointless as skin color instead of moving passed that to a post-racism world.
You based things like scholarships on need and merit. Some $30k/year family is no better off than some other $30k/year family just because one of them might be a certain color. That’s utter nonsense.
I’m pretty far left, and even I felt resentment as a first-generation college grad from a lower middle class background that had to go into massive debt for law school. A friend of mine had Pilipino and black parents that were college educated and quite well off, but she had a free ride to law school because of her skin color instead of her grades, despite having far less financial need than I did. There’s no reason a poor white yokel and a poor black kid, both of whom have substantial structural and cultural barriers keeping them from accessing higher education, should be treated differently. I am not denying history, or saying that systemic racism isn’t a thing, but history and systemic racism shouldn’t be justifications for furthering inequality.
All things considered, she will be hit with more roadblocks then you over the course of her life only because of the color of her skin, and being mixed. Consider this one of the only times where the shoes on the other foot. Many minorities feel like this constantly about most major elements of society.
You don’t solve racism with MORE racism.
And “reverse racism” is no different than any other racism.
Yet that is exactly what is happening. And people see it happening and it turns off some of the same people who would otherwise support your cause. This is a situation that breeds resentment, and stories like the ones posted over the last few days where a LOT of young white males are turning to right-wing groups should not be a surprise to anyone. These terribly thought-out policies are pushing many white (as well as Asian and Indian and Cuban) voters away from left-leaning causes because they feel they are being excluded. The Left is fighting racism in the dumbest way possible… with more racism, and SHOCKINGLY it is blowing up in their faces.
Meanwhile a neighborhood over, the kids don’t need scholarships.
Both scenarios breed resentment.
We need better answers, like… free public education, better schools, tutoring supplements for those who ask (including high acheivers), and it needs to go through uni and trades.
We can’t keep having people left behind because of structural issues. Poor decisions happen and it’s nice to soften blows where we can. But if a person commits no errors and ends up paycheck to paycheck for the rest of their life… that’s a failed society.
We need to transcend the “they get x and we don’t” part of this and get onto the real thing.
One of them got “the talk”, the other didn’t. It’s not all about economic status. They’re treated different, no matter what. I see it every single day, even in friends and family, and even on Lemmy. This mindset just adds to the fire. Resentment is in the mind of the beholder, skin color is not a choice.
What is the justice of a rich black valley girl from Santa Barbara (who was always going to be college-bound) getting a free ride because of her skin color despite ZERO financial need, and a poor white yokel kid from rural Alabama not going to school because she can’t afford to (who also gets zero social support for going to college because her culture decided to intentionally devalue education as being “liberal elite”)?
The fact that racism is a problem and that “the talk” is still a reality doesn’t justify race-based preferential treatment. No wonder culture wars are so easy to wage.
Culture wars are easy to wage because of childish assholes that can’t handle seeing someone else receiving aid. Poor white yokel kids from rural Alabama problems stem from their parents voting for shit people that want them to be poor and uneducated. Then they grow up to vote for the same breed of shit people, against the aid (education, fair labor laws, safety regulations, etc) everyone else is trying to give them. They dig their own graves, over and over. Minorities are born into a grave, they’re trying to crawl out of it and a ridiculous amount of assholes are, not only not lending a hand, they’re attacking anyone that tries. Affirmative action doesn’t work perfectly but only because it gets abused by those same assholes.
Can you link me to a source so I can review the details of that case?
The source is me. One of my roommates was from Santa Barbara and enjoyed a free ride to a out-of-state public school based on her race. She reeked of money and privilege and had no business getting a free ride.
So every minority that wanted to attended that school got a scholarship then? Presumably a worse off minority should have taken the slot. Your missing a lot of vital context.
Fair enough. I’m not singleminded about this, but it certainly raised my hackles hearing her go on and on in her valley girl meets prep school accent about how hard it was to be her, while she meanwhile had every privilege available to her,flew anywhere she wanted on a whim, and drove around a paid-for new Lexus SUV that her daddy gave her. I don’t know what justice should look like, but giving her a free ride sure as hell wasn’t it.
There are always going to be individuals that don’t deserve things. Across the entire population however, these systems work and well. For all we know she was in massive debt. I know throughout my twenties some of my peers would have new cars constantly and buy expensive things they didn’t need and most of the time I found out they had $10k+ on credit cards and were living paycheck to paycheck with no savings or investments.
It’s important to keep in mind that these systems are seeking to correct the long standing discrimination faced by people of color that were unable to obtain these things for no other reason than the color of their skin. They weren’t given access to capital despite being just as qualified as anyone else. They weren’t allowed to attend most colleges. Movies like Hidden Figures and the Banker, although dramatized, paint a picture of what needed to be corrected. As modern society chips away at these safeguards, it remains to be seen if we slip back into those patterns.