Affirmative Action

[SirDennis]

It really strikes me how SOME men view this: they aren't "winning" so they . . . are LOSING!!!!! It just boggles the mind. If you're not top dog and crushing everyone beneath you? You lost. You're a loser. It isn't fair. Women don't play fair. The world wasn't meant to be like this! Schools should still be run to suit the way boys learn!!! Girls always managed, jeez, look at some women in the past, they succeeded in a man's world!!!!!!!

There is a difference between striving for equality and striving for dominance (or winning as you put it). You must have missed the part where the old boys did not give up their dominance and inequality is still the defining feature of society. But if you are ok with that, who am I to judge?

And actually, in public schools, in Canada, it is not more fair. Educators are just now realizing that they swung the pendulum past the point of equilibrium creating as many new victims of an age as they sought to save.

And no, it is not okay that a generation of males were hobbled because of the excesses of previous generations of males.

[Cenedril_Gildinaur]

The Law of Unintended Consequences was never repealed.

That should be tattooed to the forehead of every politician and written into the preamble of every legislative bill.

[Primula Baggins]

I'm not apologizing for any flawed system, but I do want to point out that any large system like this has to be designed in one of two ways: to make sure that everyone who needs help gets it, at the inevitable cost of helping some who don't need it; or to ensure that no one who doesn't need help gets it, at the inevitable cost of mistakenly shutting out some people who do need help. Error is inherent, and a society has to decide which kind is tolerable.

[SirDennis]

I'm not apologizing for any flawed system, but I do want to point out that any large system like this has to be designed in one of two ways: to make sure that everyone who needs help gets it, at the inevitable cost of helping some who don't need it; or to ensure that no one who doesn't need help gets it, at the inevitable cost of mistakenly shutting out some people who do need help. Error is inherent, and a society has to decide which kind is tolerable.

Very profound Prim. One always hopes the former design would be implemented... if you take care of the weakest or least, everyone benefits.

One faulty assumption with affirmative action was that poverty was a symptom of ethnicity and/or gender rather than a root cause of diminished academic performance and future economic security. As Anth's story touches on, the lack of opportunity poverty affords is not confined to race or gender; especially in the decades following the 70's where whites have gradually succumbed to economic and familial trends as well.

A system that sought to help only some people, based on biological traits (as if those traits were the source of their problem), should reasonably have been expected to create a new class of disadvantaged persons. Sociologists have know for decades (though for some reason no one wants to listen as it seems to contradict the American dream) that economic class is the prime, if not only (if leaving providence aside completely), determinant of an individual's economic future. Thinking that only certain groups suffer with poverty is racist and paternalistic.

[vison]

It really strikes me how SOME men view this: they aren't "winning" so they . . . are LOSING!!!!! It just boggles the mind. If you're not top dog and crushing everyone beneath you? You lost. You're a loser. It isn't fair. Women don't play fair. The world wasn't meant to be like this! Schools should still be run to suit the way boys learn!!! Girls always managed, jeez, look at some women in the past, they succeeded in a man's world!!!!!!!

There is a difference between striving for equality and striving for dominance (or winning as you put it). You must have missed the part where the old boys did not give up their dominance and inequality is still the defining feature of society. But if you are ok with that, who am I to judge?

And actually, in public schools, in Canada, it is not more fair. Educators are just now realizing that they swung the pendulum past the point of equilibrium creating as many new victims of an age as they sought to save.

And no, it is not okay that a generation of males were hobbled because of the excesses of previous generations of males.

I'm not okay with it, and hope that it will vanish into the night.

As for a generation of males being "hobbled", my eyebrows went right up into my hair and haven't come down again.

No generation of males has been hobbled. It seems that when there is a "level playing field" girls often do astoundingly well and out-perform boys in many academic subjects. This is not because girls have been "given" an advantage at the expense of boys - at least not by the school system. Nature may have given them the advantage: girls (especially young girls) are able to sit still longer, concentrate better in certain ways, etc.

Since until very recently girls and women weren't in the schools, no one really noticed it.

Times change.

[axordil]

girls (especially young girls) are able to sit still longer, concentrate better in certain ways, etc.

When I was a child, back in the benighted 60s and 70s, there was never any doubt who "the best students" were through at least the beginning of high school: girls. For the reason you cite right there. I submit elementary education has traditionally been slanted in favor of girls for the last century or more.

Secondary education is another issue entirely. It used to be that right about the time some boys settle down, some girls seem to lose interest. I'm open to suggestions as to why that happens.

[Griffon64]

The lament that a generation of previously privileged have been hobbled is a common one. It occurs to me that a level playing field probably feels like being hobbled if you were used to playing with the cards stacked in your favor.

[vison]

I am old enough to be the mother/grandmother of everyone here, I think. I lived in the Dark Ages.

First, I want say this: Halofirians are not "typical". Everyone here - as far as I can see - is an exceptional person. Everyone here is exceptional in character, and in achievement.

I'm not blowing smoke, as they say. It's true. Many of you here succeeded in spite of something. Gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, learning disabilities, poverty. Whatever. You are an amazing bunch and you do not for one second represent "average" anything.

When I was in elementary school, then as now girls were "better students". Boys were noisy and unruly: but nonetheless, school was intended for boys. Even in the little grades (as we used to say), it was clear that it was nice and cute and all that girls could print neatly and liked to line up and have their hands and nails inspected. But boys were encouraged and tolerated in ways that girls simply weren't.

In high school it all became clear. I was a straight A student. I excelled particularly in math. But at the end of grade 9 all the girls were taken aside and it was suggested that most of us "would be happier" in "general math" unless - and it was a BIG unless - the girl was aiming for nursing or teaching. Even then, you were NOT required to have a math major. You could, and many did, go to nursing school or take teacher's training with no math major.

Some of us, though, kept on with math and science. At the beginning of grades 11 and 12 girls were once again encouraged to drop math and science majors in favour of "general courses". My math teacher always told us girls we woudn't need trig to fold diapers.

And we all laughed. Which makes me cringe.

So at some point I thought about going into Engineering. I loved the stuff. I had the marks. And UBC had then and has now an excellent engineering school. It wasn't going to happen. My parents couldn't afford to send me to UBC and there was almost zero chance I'd get a scholarship, they just didn't give that kind of scholarship to girls. I guess I could have worked my way through . . . but I doubt it.

And, to be perfectly honest, I didn't have the drive or fire to do it. I was "going steady". I knew I was going to marry this guy. I wasn't going to give that up to go and be an engineer and have to find a toilet on a worksite: that was the big drawback to women engineers! Where would you go to the bathroom?

But at the same time, even though I know I wimped out, the pressure AGAINST girls in school was enormous. You have no idea, if you didn't live through it.

It was worse in the office environment I worked in. Sexual discrimination in wages, and sexual harrassment all the time: I wasn't "special", it happened to every girl I knew in that place and that was actually a pretty good place to work, considering.

Now, we hear that it's all tilted in favour of girls. Well, I beg to differ.

The worst thing that's happening to girls now is the atrocious sexualization of girl children. I don't think there is a group of nasty old white men sitting in a tower somewhere arranging all this, but there might as well be.

Not all girls, not all the time. But it's a sickening sight, and it has the same effect as the discouragement I got as a girl. Millions of girls are learning to value themselves solely as sex objects. More than even when I was a girl, since it is much coarser and bolder.

[axordil]

Even in the little grades (as we used to say), it was clear that it was nice and cute and all that girls could print neatly and liked to line up and have their hands and nails inspected. But boys were encouraged and tolerated in ways that girls simply weren't.

Well, our experiences are obviously different, which is okay. Where I was, the vast majority of the kids who acted out in the little grades (I like that btw) were boys, and a disproportionate number of the regular offenders never graduated high school. By the time they got there they'd decided school wasn't for them, or perhaps vice versa, and they left as soon as they could.

As to steering girls away from the harder math and science courses...by my time that didn't happen quite as much, or as obviously. I'd say my senior year calc course was in the neighborhood of 50-50. On the other hand, my organic chem class--all six of us--was the most lopsided, with only one young woman, as I recall, and physics was probably 60-40 male.

First two years of college was where I saw the biggest dropoff in math and the hard sciences.

Yeah, I was a special case, but then, they district had figured out I was weird in Kindergarten.

[Hachimitsu]

I agree with Griffy. That's all I have to say.

[Teremia]

I also agree with Griffy. I think it's fine to dream of a post-affirmative-action era, when *because racism no longer weighs certain people down* those people no longer are given an extra hand up.

But we are not there yet. Racism still affects people's daily lives. (Sexism, too.)

What about those studies where Asian girls were given math tests, and sometimes the testers casually pointed out that the test-takers were Asian, and sometimes casually pointed out that they were girls? And of course they did better when thinking of themselves as "Asian" than when thinking of themselves as "girls." I'm just saying, our expectations and our prejudices go extremely deep.

It also makes a REAL difference being able to see people "like you" succeeding in every field. When I was in college, starting off as a physics major, there were something like 2 or 3 girls in my math classes, out of 50. And NO women teaching. I internalized that for sure (with the help of my scientist father, who told me that physics was the only worthwhile thing for me to do AND told me that girls weren't really able to do it). If I got a bad grade on something, I thought that was just a sign that, as Dad and society had always said, I was a girl, and girls couldn't really do physics. And I gave up and changed my major.

Affirmative action is one way to broaden people's visions of what is POSSIBLE for them. Sometimes it's clunky, sure! But good grief, we don't live in a world yet where the playing field is anything like level, and to pretend it is is like, is like -- shoot, what's a good analogy? Like saying we're tired of a flu epidemic and think in theory the flu should be over, so we're going to stop vaccinating and treating people for the flu?

[anthriel]

Well, I agree with Griffy, too. And I have tried to tell myself, over the years, that that sort of thing is actually the basis of the resentment I felt at the time. That I was so used to getting so much biased favoritism, all of it without noticing it as favoritism at all, that the rude awakening of someone being given an advantage over me based on skin color/ethnicity was... well, it was shocking.

I tried to tell myself that Juan had had issues because of his ethnicity that affected him, and those issues would be invisible to me because they had never happened to me. I've always thought that if you want to see if something's unfair to a group, ask the group. They'll know. Generally, others will have a harder time seeing it.

So I moved on, and found some money elsewhere. I did refuse to tutor Juan any more, however, and I sort of regret that now. He was just taking advantage of money offered to him, and he didn't design the system, not at all. He did boast a little that he had "beat" his own tutor, and I without a doubt told him I could lick 'em in anything math with half my brain tied behind my back. Which was undoubtedly true.

He probably shouldn't have gloated, and I probably should have been bigger than my disappointment, and continued to help him, because my help really did work out for him (sometimes that tutor/student thing just "clicks"). I just dropped tutoring completely, actually. It never sounded like fun again.

So the Law of Unintended Consequences struck again. Yov's comment clearly is right to the point.

[nerdanel]

I agree with Griffy with respect to the unpersuasive argument that boys have been "hobbled" because girls are out-achieving them ... due, apparently, to schools favoring students who can - no, wait for it! - sit still, behave themselves, and concentrate. (We should definitely design classes that instead reward kids who run around and are distracted.)

However, the argument that race-based affirmative action is only "hobbling" those who were previously playing with the cards stacked in their favor is quite literally inaccurate. I notice that no one has touched with a ten-foot pole the reality of the argument that affirmative action disproportionately harms Asian-Americans - who bear no direct or indirect responsibility for American slavery or segregation, who are far from immune from racism, and who are not typically burdened at birth with large inheritances and vast resources. This actually continues a trend that I've perceived from childhood - that we are in so many ways rendered invisible in societal discourse (apart from, apparently, the recent wave of "Linsanity"). Everything is framed in black and white terms, increasingly with Hispanics added into the mix.

While it is nice - and quite a luxury - to get to see "people like you" succeeding in every field, or at least your chosen field, Asian-Americans in my field certainly don't get that. We are painfully underrepresented in the ranks of judges, law firm partners, law professors, and other high-achieving attorney demographics, because we are fairly new entrants into this field. This is doubly true for Asian-American women. You know what, it means that we have to find inspiration and strength wherever we can. It might mean relating to a Hispanic man or white woman who has succeeded despite racism or sexism. It might mean saying, "You know what, there's really been no one from my background who has achieved my goals in this field, so hey, maybe I get to be the first." It does not mean that - if we are not the highest achievers - that others should face discrimination in order that we can see "people like us" succeeding.

The first business meetings I participated in as a law student/summer associate, there were fifteen white men in the room + me (I worked for a NY-headquartered white shoe law firm in law school, and that's what the demographics looked like.) I had never seen a female-majority appellate panel until - or been in a trial court where the judge was female - until 2009, three years after I graduated from law school. I remember almost falling out of my seat the first I was at an appellate oral argument where all three of the judges were female and were putting male attorneys through the ringer in quite alpha/aggressive style. It was tremendously empowering - an emotional high I'll remember for the rest of my life (although I still had to fill in the blanks to imagine an Asian-American female judge, since there was no one of the sort available.)

So yeah, I get that it's empowering to see people "like you" succeed, but I'm also not too sympathetic to that argument as a basis for discriminating against the highest achievers. I've definitely made it through the first six years of my career seeing barely any Asian-American female role models succeeding in my field (let alone Indian-American women. I can't think of a single such judge, partner, etc. that I've ever met.) So, to me, that argument cannot justify abandoning merit-based standards or discriminating against people, especially those who do not come from racially privileged backgrounds in the first place. And I think that "clunky" is an extremely problematic euphemism for racist decisions: decisions rejecting people on the basis of their skin color.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I see no reason why considering the fact that someone is Asian-American and that increasing the participation of Asian-Americans in a field that has not traditionally had a high degree of representation by that group of people would be a less desirable factor to consider than, say allowing special consideration to give to "legacy" applicants simply because that person's parent happen to attend the school in question.

[nerdanel]

I see both factors as highly undesirable. I oppose legacy admissions as strongly as I oppose race-based affirmative action. After all, I said that I supported a merit-based system, not a money-based system.

[Griffon64]

I would not have liked Juan's response in the situation one little bit, anthy. I am sorry you had to deal with that.

My comment wasn't directed at your situation at all, btw. Just wanted to make sure that that's clear!

I also want to say that while I come down on the side that doesn't think anybody should be advantaged/disadvantaged because of skin color/ethnicity ( or gender ), I also think society should be really, really careful not to use that as an excuse to drift back towards the way things were. I don't think society as a whole is at the point yet where the natural drift would be to a completely discrimination-free society. When a person says: "I am being disadvantaged, here!" it could be "I am not being privileged, so to me it feels like a disadvantage, and I want that changed!" or it could be "I was just as good ( or better ) but somebody else got picked only because they had a different skin color/gender, and that doesn't sit well with me." There's a big difference. yov's comment holds a lot of truth.

People never take easily to a loss of privilege, and always takes dead easy to gaining privilege, in my experience. It is hard to later on ratchet down a privilege granted without causing resentment, so privilege should be given very judiciously. In my opinion: very seldom, if at all. Equal opportunity, on the other hand - that should always be given. And a merit-based system should be automatic.

nerdanel - my comment was indeed framed in the context of thinking about boys being hobbled, since that is what was addressed earlier in the thread, and that's what made me think about it.

[nerdanel]

Griffy, thanks, I thought that's exactly what you meant based on the context in which your comment was made. But I think some of the posts agreeing with you were extrapolating your argument to the race-based affirmative action context, so I wanted to address that context too.

[Teremia]

I was one of those extrapolating!

But that's partly because it was when I saw how much difference it made to me to see or not see women succeeding in physics that the lightbulb went on in my head: so how about being identified as a member of a race that never appears as X, Y, and Z? So I don't know, nel, it seems to me the world would be better with more Asian females in places where they are now scarce. For example.

I also feel strongly that calling the REMEDY racist is to gloss over the racism inherent in the larger situation. To ignore or underplay that underlying racism feels like wishful thinking to me. "Merit" is measured how? How are those measurements affected by the underlying racism of the culture more broadly? They *are* affected!

Moreover, in most situations what we're talking about is affirmatively choosing someone partly because he or she is part of an under-represented group. That is not the same as "rejecting someone on the basis of their skin color." There will typically be very few slots open at a selective school (or whatever): MOST people will NOT get in. In situations like that, after the first couple of rounds where you are, indeed, "rejecting" people (but for merit-based reasons--they don't come up to snuff in some way), then you have to CHOOSE the small number you will accept. Each one of the people you choose will present a unique pattern of strengths. It is not that there is some Ladder of Cosmic Merit where you can say the candidates line up, 1 2 3 4 5 . . . . No, instead you have a pool of very strong people, and you create a class (or cohort) from them. If diversity is counted as one among a number of strengths, then I see that as a good thing.

[SirDennis]

Just popping in

No generation of males has been hobbled. It seems that when there is a "level playing field" girls often do astoundingly well and out-perform boys in many academic subjects. This is not because girls have been "given" an advantage at the expense of boys - at least not by the school system. Nature may have given them the advantage: girls (especially young girls) are able to sit still longer, concentrate better in certain ways, etc.

But the playing field has not been levelled, it has be changed to favour one style of learning at the expense of another. But I see that, as it favours well your preferred gender group (at long last), there is not much point in our continuing this side discussion -- not least of which because I no longer give a flying bleep as I indicated at the outset.

The lament that a generation of previously privileged have been hobbled is a common one. It occurs to me that a level playing field probably feels like being hobbled if you were used to playing with the cards stacked in your favor.

The field never was level and it is still not. Anyone who thinks it is moreso than it used to be is deluding themselves. And that is why the problem of inequality remains.

[Hachimitsu]

I will say I extrapolated to race, but gender matters also.

I could go on about how most people I know in under represented groups, know they will be discriminated against, so they worked to get the highest credentials possible and they still don't get hired (being young and female, employers assume a woman will get pregnant and also take maternity leave. what about paternity leave?)

Any way the whole point was to get qualified peoples foot in the door.

I have heard some parts of Europe have done the number system so rather then knowing an applicants name, they only know them as a number and the diversity of employees has increased. But that is with hiring. It does not account for lack of educational opportunities.

Also most employers are willing to give a white male "a chance" rather then any other group.

Does anyone know "the look" one can get when people first meet you? The one that says the barriers are up? I think AA was put in to force employers and educators to look past those barriers.

I have more to say, but it's doubtful I will post it since I didn't even want to wade into this landmine of a subject.