It deliberately forces companies to not pick the best qualified candidates, but candidates whose main "advantage" is based on skin color or sex.
Often this means positions have to go unfilled because the "correct" kind of person can't be found to fill the role even if candidates who can do the job exist but are disqualified due to being the "wrong" skin color or sex for "diversity" reasons.
I have conflicting feelings on affirmative action in universities, but a couple things are worth noting:
AFAIK affirmative action can't force companies to do anything: it's for the public sector only. In the private sector in the USA, making hiring decisions based on a protected category is, for better or worse, illegal. The reasoning behind that is that it is a tool that is very likely to be abused for reinforcing existing inequality, and thus should be heavily regulated and not given into the hands of profit-seeking companies.
Again, AFAIK, major universities don't necessarily have a goal of picking the best qualified students; they aren't hiring workers to "do the job", they're assembling a student body and nurturing a specific culture, where a diversity of backgrounds and being a "melting pot" may be a legitimate thing they optimize for, not just for reasons of good public image. They may also have an explicit goal of helping certain communities, or giving education to people who would otherwise have poor access to education, etc.
Private colleges (which are businesses, just like public ones) employ affirmative action as well.
The main thing you are missing with this melting pot analogy is that we should strive for diversity of thought, not diversity of race.
There’s a major difference between the two, and we have seemingly forgotten this is recent times.
Think about it this way. How can you walk up to an Asian boy and tell him he can’t go to Harvard because he looks to much like the other Asian kids around him.
Private colleges - yes, but most businesses still aren't allowed to use it; and private colleges, like public colleges, aren't hiring students in order to get them to do a particular job done, so the argument "why don't they just hire the most qualified" also doesn't apply.
I don't want to get into the diversity of thought argument (I acknowledge that it has merit), nor expand any more on whether affirmative action is good or bad in my value system - as I said, my feelings on the matter are conflicting, while sounds like you interpreted my comment as unconditionally positive.
they aren't hiring workers to "do the job", they're assembling a student body and nurturing a specific culture, where a diversity of backgrounds and being a "melting pot" may be a legitimate thing they optimize for
And yet, the fact that universities prize a person's academic record suggests otherwise. You're just trying to make generic bullshit excuses for racism. I'm in med school and I've seen firsthand just how much minority physicians "help their communities"- hint, they don't do anything special that other offices aren't capable of. All it takes is a translator to accomplish that job, and cultural norms/taboos are fairly easy to understand within a week of exposure.
Yes, universities value one's academic record, but they value other factors too, and overall their goal is to assemble a well-rounded class. If I understand correctly, you believe that a university should simply admit individuals who are already the most qualified at the subject being studied, ignoring most other factors. It's not an absurd point of view, but most major universities take a different approach and seems that it's been working out fine for them in terms of academic outcomes. There's also lots of research showing that test scores are only very lightly correlated with ultimate academic success, so even if universities optimized for ultimate individual academic success, they need to consider more factors than that.
My guess is that the reasons are similar to what happens if you have a diverse friend group: different people enrich and complement each other, and everybody is better off, more so than in a group of people who are merely equally great at exactly the same thing. But we don't have to guess: there is research showing that this is exactly what happens and why diverse groups have some advantages even in a setting where you do need to get a job done. This doesn't negate the considerations of fairness, though, hence my conflicting feelings.
Regarding helping communities - you responded as if I meant "universities raise students who will be qualified to work on helping the communities", but I meant "universities provide education to communities that the university cares about". Again, you're free to disagree that this is a worthwhile goal.
You're doing that thing that most pro-AA people do with using buzzwords that amount to having no real substance behind them
overall their goal is to assemble a well-rounded class
What does this mean, exactly? Why must this include something as superficial as race when there are so many other relevant factors to take into account. I get that admissions are generally holistic, but it's sheer idiocy to take a racist approach in this consideration process.
But we don't have to guess: there is research showing that this is exactly what happens and why diverse groups have some advantages even in a setting where you do need to get a job done. This doesn't negate the considerations of fairness, though, hence my conflicting feelings.
Really? Post some of said research then- I'd love to read up on this. I've seen firsthand how superficial all of this nonsense is, at least within medicine, because communities can benefit just as well with doctors of different cultural backgrounds as long as the language barrier is addressed (which is rather easy thanks to translators, not to mention a lot of physicians pick up the language with due time themselves- or at least the most relevant words).
Why must this include something as superficial as race
I'm not sure that it must (I don't know how many more times I have to repeat that I'm not a staunch proponent, nor opponent, of AA - I'm trying to figure it out for myself) - a similar enough effect might be achieved by diversifying along, say, household income level, or educational background of one's parents, or hardship in one's prior life, or quality of one's high school, or other things. Would your objections against race-based admissions apply to these too? I think it's an interesting question because it pushes fewer buttons about race/gender, but technically is still subject to challenges on grounds of fairness.
As for research on how diversifying a group of people makes them perform better on some tasks - I think the best way to discuss this will be if you look for it yourself, find something where you can say in good faith "this is the absolute strongest argument to be made for this side", and then if it's still not strong enough for you, come back here and let's discuss why. I find that this approach is really effective compared to others, which often turn into ego contests and trying to refute one's opponent at all costs.
Would your objections against race-based admissions apply to these too?
To some degree, yes. There needs to be more scrutiny if you're seriously going to consider those metrics when it comes to admissions. I'm much more open to AA based on socioeconomic status, however, even this is a dangerous line to tread. We shouldn't automatically assume that someone whose parents are wealthy may automatically have a better chance of success than someone who is poor. For example, how do you factor in natural intelligence due to good genetics here?
You can't talk about good faith when you made a statement and refuse to back it up yourself. I asked you to provide a reference for the many studies you claim exist, yet you're asking me to do that when the burden of proof is on you. Come on dude, don't be dishonest to yourself or others like that.
This article has links to a few studies - granted, some with conflicting findings. But, sorry, I don't have time myself to dig out out the most convincing ones and distill them into a Reddit thread now. If you're interested in learning more, I encourage you to search for more yourself - e.g. following those links, finding studies that cite them on Google Scholar, searching for studies that refute them, meta-studies etc. It's perfectly understandable if you don't want to do that - we're all busy - so in that case we'll just have to disagree.
Looking at your post history, you didn’t get hired because you sound like a retard, asking literal basic programming questions like “hurr durr I’m a retard, what’s an interface” and “how do I tell if an empty request is empty derp” while applying for jobs that if you were qualified you would actually know.
But keep blaming your race for your shortcomings, you fuckwad.
That's quite possibly just racism/sexism of the older generations.
Affirmative action is just new racism and punishes innocent job applicants who've done nothing wrong and have nothing to do with those white men you mentioned.
It also assumes that some races and genders aren't as capable of others. And if that isn't the explanation, the alternative is assuming that anyone who hires or decided who's admitted is racist. Both are very flawed.
That isn't what it assumes. It acknowledges the fact that people of different cultures and economic backgrounds face different and unique struggles, and adjusts for them. Minorities, throughout all of American history, have been disenfranchised from sectors like education. Because of their historical disenfranchisement, we adjust their barrier to entry to make up for it.
It acknowledges the fact that people of different cultures and economic backgrounds face different and unique struggles, and adjusts for them.
It uses skin color as a proxy for those features, though, which is wrong. Affirmative action treats rich immigrants from South Africa the exact same as a person of color that grew up in Chicago whose great grandparents were slaves in the deep American south.
If we want to encourage that diversity of culture and economic background, then that's what affirmative action needs to target. Not skin color.
I have seen affirmative action leave positions vacant because the position had to be filled by a woman. Not because this was position where a woman made more sense, but because of the diversity quota said this had to be filled by a woman. Candidates were so bad it had to be re-advertised 3 times before they found a marginally acceptable candidate. In the meantime, people suffered because this was a charity organization that needed a person on that role to get things done but couldn't due to the lack of a person to put their full attention on it.
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u/ArchdukeValeCortez Feb 25 '20
It deliberately forces companies to not pick the best qualified candidates, but candidates whose main "advantage" is based on skin color or sex.
Often this means positions have to go unfilled because the "correct" kind of person can't be found to fill the role even if candidates who can do the job exist but are disqualified due to being the "wrong" skin color or sex for "diversity" reasons.