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by armchairhacker
14 days ago
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> We are closer to ending sexism and racism than we were 70 years ago before any affirmative action existed, right? Correlation does not imply causation > Who’s to say that all the backfiring and unintended consequences that have happened aren’t better than the parallel universe in which maybe slavery still exists? They are better, but it's a low bar and an even lower one > Would it have happened faster with no quotas or boosts for groups that were historically discriminated against? Maybe, but even if "no", keeping the quota may cause a backslide. Artificially balancing preferential treatment by applying it badly in the wrong direction is a duct-tape solution. Sure, it may have been justified after the Civil Rights Act. But it's not ideal and doesn't seem justified anymore, when we can easily positively discriminate for traits that are more obviously and universally negatively discriminated against, like income. |
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This is not relevant to what I said. We are closer to ending sexism and racism due to legislation, which is causal. We took specific actions to try to end sexism and racism and we know they had a positive effect.
> Artificially balancing preferential treatment by applying it badly in the wrong direction is a duct tape solution
I agree! It was meant to be a duct tape solution, from the start. It was meant to be temporary and end preferential treatment and go away.
> it may have been justified after the Civil Rights Act
I agree with this too, the justification was probably much stronger 60 or 70 years ago. It is weaker now… and that might be an indicator of its success.
Applying it badly has happened, and it’s lame and sucks, but that’s not an inherent feature or outcome of the core idea. Some might rightly say it was predictable.
The big open question is whether turning off all affirmative action will close that remaining gap, or leave us with a little bit of persistent systemic bias, or worse, a backslide. If that does, the next question is what to do.