[adbachman]

> How exactly does present-day affirmative action recompense the victims of racist policies from half a century ago?

Near the top of this thread one specific "how" was discussed.

Legacy admissions are affirmative action which offers preferential access based on ancestry. If your parents, your grandparents, or anyone of their race was (legally at the time) forbidden from attending, how else would you have representation in that process?

Affirmative action is an artificially generated membership in the "belongs at this institution" club for people who may otherwise be excluded.

[scarmig]

That's missing the point: how does giving person A preferential access to college recompense person B who is distinct from person A?

As far as legacy admissions go, they're noxious, but you're not accounting for the ~99% of people who don't have that privilege.

[mcphage]

> the ~99% of people who don't have that privilege

What percentage of accepted students have that privilege? It's pretty high.

[scarmig]

That's irrelevant, though, when you're talking about the vast majority of people who apply who don't get accepted because of those factors. Telling someone "you're privileged because a child of a Kennedy gets a leg up in going to Harvard and shares your skin color, even though you don't get that same leg up" is ridiculous, to say nothing of Asians who are discriminated against despite having relatively few legacies.

[jcranmer]

A quick search suggests that for Harvard (one of the institutions specifically sued here), it's 36% of the class of 2022.