[Spivak]

Any change to the college admissions process will positively affect some groups and negatively affect others.

There will always be some controversy over whether any change actually makes it fairer or whether the changes were made to achieve a specific outcome.

[roamerz]

At a superficial level yes. The actual impact to people and society I think is far greater and will have an overall negative affect on society and interracial relationships. Putting myself in the shoes of someone that was bumped out of something they earned through hard work and dedication because my skin color was not correct would make me bitter to those that implemented the policy as well as (hopefully less so) the person that got my seat. So now whoever made this policy has just maybe added a little racist chip on my shoulder where one did not exist previously. Multiply this many times over and all of a sudden we have a more racist society and reversing what I think the direction we have been going.

[Akronymus]

Not to forget that a when person who fits the criteria get in, they can most likely never be sure whether they deserved it or if it is because of their skin colour.

[vagrantJin]

Theres a certain thing about race, that we can threaten to be racists if things don't go our way. Is being a racist somehow a good thing? I'm not implying we should hold hands and sing kumbaya, far from it.

But why threaten to become a racist particularly?

We need discourse, demonstrations and solutions, that insititions should very well look for and nuture young talent from wherever it may come from.

But to threaten to be actively racist, without ecploring any other solution is truly telling.

[username90]

When you are racist against people then they will likely become racist. It isn't a threat, that is just how the world works. You can't just impose policies without evaluating them holistically, if you don't take into account that the people you are racist against might become more racist then you aren't doing your job properly.

[mk81]

>But to threaten to be actively racist, without exploring any other solution is truly telling.

I assume you're referring to the practice of requiring higher scores for Asian students? And then doing away with the standardized tests altogether when it got too hard to get the outcomes you want? That active racism?

[roamerz]

Maybe I am misunderstanding your comment or I didn’t do a good enough job writing mine. I was simply trying to put myself in that position and analyze what I might be feeling and then extrapolate that to what overall affect there might be to society.

[rayiner]

> Any change to the college admissions process will positively affect some groups and negatively affect others.

That embeds some really questionable assumptions about “some groups.”

[imwillofficial]

No it doesn’t. It’s simply stating the realty of a trade off.

[nonethewiser]

Which is why chosing by merit is the only fair way

[jjeaff]

There are several problems with choosing by merit.

One, you have to define merit and whether it really is merit. If a rich kid scores higher because he got an expensive private tutor that taught him how to do better on the test really more meritorious than the smarter poor kid who scored lower because she didn't have said private tutor?

Second, you have historically marginalized groups that lose out because their ancestors were systematically abused, not allowed to be educated, not allowed into most institutions.

Saying that it should all just be a meritocracy now is like someone that gets a big headstart in a race and then once that headstart is pointed out, they start calling for fair play.

[faeriechangling]

I don't support getting rid of standardized tests to undermine the rich because standardized testing REDUCED the wealthy's grip on higher education which before standardized testing was very much restricted to the wealthy.

Even in a racial quota based admission system, the elimination of standardized testing from each racial "tranche" only helps the wealthy. It's simply more expensive to fill a admission full of impressive extracurriculars and such than to do well on a test. Standardized testing was brought in to favor the intelligent over the wealthy to begin with, and while test scores and wealth are correlated this is in part because the entire point was to give better testers access to wealth and test taking ability is heritable.

[1123581321]

So solve tutor and education access issues earlier in the education process. Everyone suffers when the world’s best institutions aren’t allowed to make the most of the world’s most promising graduates.

[ralusek]

There is a deontological perspective here in which you seem to be uninterested. Not everything is best viewed from the perspective of how various groups would be impacted by a given system.