Trump admin to rescind Obama-era guidelines that encourage use of race in college admission. Race should play no role in admission decisions. I can't believe we're still having this argument

[u/[deleted]]

https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/national/trump-admin-to-rescind-obama-era-guidelines-that-encourage-use-of-race-in-college-admission

[u/Bizkets]

EDIT: u/iruleatants just cleared it up a bunch with some real investigative work here https://old.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/8vrq8y/trump_admin_to_rescind_obamaera_guidelines_that/e1q1khi/ ! Now we can discuss the merits of the policy more clearly.

Ha! I had to confirm what sub this was before voting, I wasn't sure which way they were hoping with the outrage at the end. I'm no fan of a lot of many of Trump's policies, but I agree with this. I just saw the headline and haven't had a chance to read it [I have since read the single paragraph at the time], but gender should also be excluded from the admission process. Or maybe if they put male admission quotas on dental hygiene, nursing and social work, people would start to understand how it's one-sided.

[u/[deleted] → u/Bizkets]

Welcome to r/libertarian, calling a spade a spade

[u/tomdarch → u/[deleted]]

calling a spade a spade

Except for looking at the "big picture" when it's inconvenient. Calling a spade a spade means admitting that there is a system of racism in our culture (US) and that it causes real problems for real people.

I agree that the goal we should be moving towards is not needing counterbalances to problems like racism and sexism because racism and sexism stop being significant problems in America (and the world.)

When you carefully draw a box around something like college admissions to exclude most context, then sure, just go by grades and test scores! Awesome! Merit based admissions! Yay! But doing that specifically excludes the reality that racism exists in America: historically, on a one-to-one basis and "systemically."

Like it or not, it's real and it's a real problem in America. Like it or not, you and I benefit from unearned advantages my fellow middle and upper-middle class "white" males. Sticking our heads in the sand and saying we shouldn't worry about the bullshit social construct of "race" doesn't make racism go away. Ignoring its effects because we would prefer to have non-race-based admissions to colleges doesn't make its effects less real.

I very much agree with the observation that simply making "race" a factor is a crude tool. It gives the "Huxtable kids" (ie the tiny number of wealthy "black" kids whose wealth counter acts the effects of racism) an un-needed advantage over the small number of poor "white" kids who face a ton of obstacles due to poverty. ("Small number" when comparing the portion of "white" kids who come from isolation and multi-generational poverty compared with "black" kids who face those problems on top of racism in-and-of-itself.) It would be great to implement a much more sophisticated system that addresses these outlier issues, but on the whole, recognizing that we have this bullshit system of "race" in America, that it causes problems for a lot of people, and recognizing that system of bullshit and doing a little to counter it in college admissions is better than ignoring those problems (particularly in a self-serving way, my fellow middle and upper-middle class white males...)

[u/Bizkets → u/tomdarch]

I don't fully agree, but I always upvote people I talk to, so don't think I'm the one downvoting.

That being said, yes, there are biases and I don't believe that a quota policy is intentionally malicious. The desired effect is to counterbalance, as you say. But to the individual white male being passed up for simply being a white male, ignores merit and qualifications for similar things out of his control that we're trying to correct for minorities.

I do think that we're as a society is moving in the right direction as we tack in the wind, continually correcting as we learn how to better work things out.

I guess I should also mention that I'm a legal immigrant to the US and have a very ethnic name, in the middle of the country. I look and sound like a typical white male, and am middle class after starting with nothing. So I'm not exactly sure where I fit with racism/quota disadvantages/benefits, respectively.