AFFIRMATIVE ACTION ENDED! RICH WHITE LIBERALS HIT HARDEST
There is no "minoritized group" more upset about the end of AA than the rich white liberals who man the ramparts of upscale journalism and academia and who live and die by the NYT and NPR etc.
How are they supposed to be saviors without official victims to save? (Whether the "victims" like it or not.) How are they supposed to signal that they're the Good Whites who worship and adore the black/brown Wretched of the Earth as opposed to those evil fascist Bad Whites who need re-education and muzzling?
Treating black people as normal flesh-and-blood humans and not sacred symbols is going to be very difficult and disturbing for them. Next thing you know, their class pets might even disagree with them and voice different opinions...Impossible!
Racial quotas and boosts provide as much joy and purpose to the giver as to the receiver. Our liberal upper crust, passionate egalitarians all, are going to have to find new and different ways to signal their moral and intellectual superiority.
Actually, rich white liberals won't be the hardest hit family-wise, if affirmative action finished. They do it because they are brain-washed into this pseudo-altruism.
One needs to look up terms like opportunity hoarding or dream hoarding. The elite whites know how to deal with changes in requirements and standards. Also, what drives liberal whites is the fear of being called a racist.
David French is an idiot. He's a good example of what going to an Ivy League school does to the minds of people who grew up conservative. We're both from Tennessee, but I gave up on him years ago. (My son has a Harvard MBA.)
This is dumb even for French though. He knows the Ivies aren't admitting low class blacks with the possible exception of a few athletes. Hatred of the people he grew up with is what drives him. There is no one of earth he despises more than lower class rural whites.
"I mean, while The New Yorker covers Steve Sailer as a figure of fashion, it would never stoop so low as to review his book."
Steve, why do I sometimes get the feeling that you're not letting this go? Or in the words of late MLB P Jim Bouton's 2nd book, "I'm Glad You Didn't Take it Personally". And maybe thats' the key to it, in the future, uh, try not to take it personally.
I mean, getting out of Twitter jail and now being considered part of the mainstream (at least on the peripherally) is a good thing; from there and gradually over time, now your work can gradually, and slowly, start to gain some mainstream acceptance.
So ultimately try not to take it so personally, as Jim Bouton might say (or write).
"Harvard crunched the numbers on race quotas vs. class quotas and long ago discovered that class quotas don’t work as race quotas."
I'm sorry, but I honestly must've been asleep because Mr Unz kept crowing a while back that the Supreme Court ruled vs Harvard with its deliberate quota practices of increasing blacks at the expense of Asians. Didn't the Supreme Court recently rule vs Harvard? Pretty sure that they did. Therefore, even for Harvard, entrance for new students based directly on affirmative action quotas are officially verboten.
Deranged take. Steve as a public figure was and remains an eminently honest and reasonable figure. As a result of his commitment to the truth he has (and to me still seems to be) been relegated to the peripheries for decades. If he wants to complain about it the little he does, given the patience and steadfastness of his position, he is displaying the longsuffering of a saint.
We have spent many decades in a swamp of lies, and yet, Steve has maintained an entirely decent (and normal, according to the thinking of the before times) character while paying for his honesty.
The ignorance or mendacity you are displaying is staggering.
Definitely, and Steve who has been isolated and pilloried for as long as I have known of him (early 2000s) remains a very calm, seemingly friendly guy. The mark of a superior personal character.
Yes he is. But it is a shame and quite strange that many of his commenters over the years have been less than charitable and like to attack different opinions. In short many (but not all) of the commenters are assholes who don't take kindly to different opinions, which is quite the opposite of the intended spirt of the First Amendment.
Let's get this straight. I've probably been a commenter on Steve's writings for far longer than about 95% of commenters here, going back to almost 17 yrs. I make it a point to not start personal attacks on other commenters, because that only looks petty, idiotic, and downright f'ed up. First Amendment applies to all; we all have the right to voice our own opinions without being threatened.
Yes of course Steve has the right to feel as he does. My larger point is that he is now little by little, slowly and surely being able to return into the mainstream of commentary opinion. As a person of his generation, perhaps he believes that the established press, such as the NYT, WaPo, New Yorker, et al remain the major players in shaping public opinion in 2025. And it's his right to feel the way that he does.
In 2025, I don't believe that that is the case, namely, that these legacy opinion makers wield the same influence that they did even up to a decade ago. In case you haven't noticed, it's an internet world. More and more people are getting their news and information from alternative sources. Obviously these institutions aren't going away any time soon. They are however becoming largely irrelevant in 2025 and for the future due in large part to alternative sources to receive information.
As to your bromides regarding Steve's integrity, honesty, etc. I happen to agree 100% and have stated so numerous times over the years. I have made it explicit that his influence can't be underestimated on the conservative mvt at large, and across generations of readers.
Late last year I compared him to the 16th century Humanist scholar Disiderius Erasmus, because of his wide influence upon all sectors of US political society. Though he was well received and respected by all factions within the burgeoning Protestant Reformation for the last 20 yrs of his career, Erasmus ended up being mistrusted by all sides (one not so small reason he has to be canonized by the Catholic Church), but due to his integrity, honesty, and clarity of vision in his public writings remained true to his cause, which was above all else, the search for truth in matters of religion. I also made the parallel to Steve in that he too has had to endure many years of thankless obscurity, as well as backhanded compliments from others. I do understand and empathize with his plight. My larger point has been that slowly and surely things are starting to open up and get a little better. Obviously as humans we can sometimes get frustrated with the way things are going and that's perfectly fine to do so. But I tend to think that things are starting to open up for him and that slowly, the future is going to be far better for him than the last several years have appeared.
Recently I made the case that it would greatly help his profile if he had some friends at court, say for example, Charles Murray to champion his cause. Or, for a younger person, say Tucker Carlson. Steve appeared on Tucker's podcast so that alone should show how the tides are starting to change. I would also recommend that if Donald Trump could appear on such popular podcasters as Joe Rogan and Theo Vonn, then perhaps Steve could do the same. After all, they have been known to invite as guests different perspectives that the NYT wouldn't be caught ever entertaining as an equal in their pages.
And that remains my point: Perhaps other sources (e.g. podcasts, etc) would be one way to go for Steve to get his ideas out to reach a larger audience. As he has already appeared on Tucker Carlson, then Joe Rogan, Theo Vonn, are also within the cards in the near future. It's time to think in a different direction and both of these two carry more weight at the popular level than the legacy media outlets. I'm sure there are other newer voices, important voices out there that are starting to make a name for themselves in 2025, perhaps they will invite Steve on as well. It's time to think positive and consider new possibilities.
Finally, it will be noted: I have NEVER directly or indirectly attacked other posters first. I believe strongly in the First Amendment that people have the right to express their thoughts and opinions in safety without being threatened by others. Once we lose that part of the Constitution, Heaven help us all.
So you have a good productive start of your new day.
A lot of things that are officially verboten are perfectly doable. Remember the open border 2021-2025? On paper, that was verboten too. Did anyone care except the electorate? And even then, it was just a moderate swing across the swing states...
Mushy-middle voters were that uninformed. Most people don't get up in the morning and ask themselves - is your normal news provider telling you lies? You need a schizoid mindset to even pose that question.
That's why Soviets had it relatively easy with psychiatrization of many of their dissidents. You can even see that angle obliquely explored in Bulgakov's Master and Margarita written in the 1930s.
> I'm sorry, but I honestly must've been asleep because Mr Unz kept crowing a while back that the Supreme Court ruled vs Harvard with its deliberate quota practices of increasing blacks at the expense of Asians. Didn't the Supreme Court recently rule vs Harvard? Pretty sure that they did. Therefore, even for Harvard, entrance for new students based directly on affirmative action quotas are officially verboten.<
Verboten? LOL. The Supreme's made their ruling and Harvard responding by imposing a race-blind SAT and grades based admissions system ... oh ... wait. Actually--as Steve's pointed out about ten times Harvard responded by admitting exactly the same 14% black quota but easing off on the Asian quota letting the Asian share rocket to 38% essentially at the expense of white gentiles. (White gentiles easily the most underrepresented group at Harvard by both population share and merit.) Harvard's administration--who are they anyway?--thumbed their nose at the Supreme's can't-use-race ruling and at flyover white gentiles.
If the standards for proving illegal discrimination have been equal in most of the country for a while, why haven't there been more suits against AA/DEI? Discovery is hardly needed, there's so much public evidence. Scared of bad press? Lack of funding? Suppression by the Bar? Blue city juries killing their chances of success? Someone (probably many) will have to step up and rake in much dough to jumpstart equal treatment.
I think without Donald as POTUS, SCOTUS would have been scared sh*tless to ban AA/DEI. Remember how Chief Justice Roberts cast his vote to legalize Obamacare?
The evidentiary bar for proving you have been racially discriminated against has been much higher for whites until now: that’s what this unanimous Supreme Court decision, written to my supreme shock by Justice Ketanji Brown, was handed down to correct.
Most of the Circuits had already equalized their standards, yet there haven't been enough successful lawsuits to change corporate/govt behavior to equal treatment.
What anti-male bias. If a selective college is 50% male, then that college or university is using affirmative action for males. This has been documented. And remember, the biggest achievement gap is between male and female black students. And there is even a gender gap when it comes to Asian students.
While there are no doubt all kinds of anti-male bias to be found at today's universities, it is no longer in the admissions department. The female numerical dominance has become so bad that such schools are unattractive to women.* David Deavel of the University of St Thomas (both USTs now) said almost a decade ago that this threatened to lead to what he called a "death spiral". It's white and Asian women who now face the discriminatory hurdle.
*Illustrative Scott Adams anecdote: he was accepted to Cornell, but chose to attend humbler Hartwick thanks to its much more favorable sex ratio. He got more dates, and an NCAA championship to boot.
The argument goes is that boys are worse at the non-cognitive part of being a student from showing up to class to doing the homework to studying for tests or remember to turn in their homework.
Of course, Steve muddles the issue by jumping between IQ, intelligent, and doing well in school without noting the differences.
> What anti-male bias. If a selective college is 50% male, then that college or university is using affirmative action for males. This has been documented.<
Uh, no. What's "been documented" is that girls consistently put up better HS grades. Boys continue to dominate in the upper reaches of the SAT. And this is true even after the 2005 torqing of the SAT to make it less IQy, more girl friendly and less predictive.
Men are simply more numerous among the "very smarts". (Not to mention they are more creative and inventive and considerable more likely to do something interesting and useful with their smarts.)
The most test score selective universities that focus on STEM--your CalTechs and MITs--have quota'd in extra girls for a couple generations now and continue to do so. HYPS is effectively doing the same when it comes to IQ, but can easily cover it by the relative weight it puts on HS grades vs. scores and verbal vs. math scores.
It is not selective schools but unselective ones--where you are down within the one SD broad mushy middle of the IQ distribution--where there are simply more girls and girls dominate in both HS grades and even--slightly--in test scores, where schools have to discriminate against girls to get something close to the desire 50/50 dating/mating balance.
Not really true. Males do slightly better in the SAT math section but there is no advantage in the verbal section.
From Richard Reeves: Overall, gender differences in combined SAT scores are less lopsided. Boys score slightly higher at the average (1032 vs. 1023). They also make up a slight majority of test takers in both the highest (57%) and the lowest (56%) deciles
A non-selective school in the U.S. will more than likely be majority male. And since public universities cannot discriminate for males, that is why schools such as UNC-Chapel Hill are 60% female. About the only public schools that are more than 50% female usually have a college of agriculture, a large college of engineering, and do not have a college of nursing.
I wonder how Mr. French’s Black! adopted daughter from Africa has performed in school? Are her SATs sufficient for admission to an elite university? Does life with David and Nancy make up for any deficiencies suffered as a result of her birth mother’s probable poor nutrition, her birth parents’ genes, and early life in an orphanage?
I’m sure the French’s have provided an optimal home environment for moral and mental development. So she has the nurture part working in her favor since the time of her adoption. So what about the nature?
I wonder how much of Mr. French’s thinking about race and racial issues have been influenced by slights and mini-aggressions suffered by his daughter? I know from reading his articles from years ago that she was the victim of such indignities. I sincerely wish the best for her and her family but I have seen firsthand my friends and associates who have adopted children from similar circumstances and the unexpected problems they have encountered.
Much of French's turn to the left is because he got a lot of hate mail regarding his daughter in 2016 when Trump trounced National Review's heartthrob, Ted Cruz.
It's hard to reason well if you declare some truths off-limits. It's like a king declaring a law against blue objects. I mean sure, you can probably build a decent city that doesn't contain any blue objects. But building a city is already hard enough without adding such a stupid rule. Wouldn't it be easier to just use the most effective objects, color be damned?
"Systemic injustice will always have individual effects, and addressing those individual effects will ultimately result in systemic change."
This is pretty strained and not even good lawyer-glibness. I mean, if it's systemic that tends to imply the effects are collective; not even individual merit will raise you out of Dalit status. And the fact that some individuals in indentured servitude may have that systemic injustices addressed by attaining trusteeship or even emancipation doesn't necessarily mean the Southern planters or Greek city-states are having a come-to-Jesus moment over slavery.
His defense of the Obergefell decision is pretty fatuous as well. Obergefell is not a "civil libertarian" decision.
The idea that thousands of people are reading and furrowing their brows and thinking David French has actually put together trenchant, logical takes is as worrisome as people taking John Kerry seriously.
The White-hating owners of the New York Times keep David French around in the same way as Ramsay Bolton in Game of Thrones kept Reek. To humiliate him and as a reminder of their own power.
"Collectively, these individualized decisions can have a systemic effect. When there has been systemic injustice, individualized assessments of resilience and achievement will have a disproportionate positive effect on marginalized communities."
Does David French still pretend to be a conservative?
I talked to David French about 10 years ago. He said that you were a racist. And I have been reading you for a while. It seems as though you approach the issue of intelligence and race in accordance with people like Charles Murray, and Hernstein of course that is against the reigning orthodoxy, but I am so surprised that French has such a Blindspot. My only complaint is that you are more flippant than I am about the Israeli and Jewish question. Each individual has things that he is concerned about over others, but that does not make him necessarily awful.
George will once said that there are two grades in diving. Is for excellence in completion and the other is for the difficulty of the dive. I very much analogize that to life. I have been lucky and blessed and so perhaps I have not come as far as someone who started far behind me, but came farther in his journey
The problem with selecting for class or disadvantage is that you have to do it by income and/or neighbourhood.
The issue here is that income has volatile over the life cycle and people don’t always live in the same place. So you can have a kid who appears disadvantaged but there is some combination of his parents having just got divorced, losing their jobs, and/or suffering from adult health at the point Harvard does its assessment.
Likewise, every neighbourhood has a fair degree of variance around the mean income and it’s possible to find high-earning households which just haven’t bothered to move as their income has increased.
Similarly , for high school. I would not classify my upbringing as remotely disadvantaged, but I went to a high school which was just about bottom quartile by social status and had a disadvantaged status. This qualified my classmates for preferential access to the nearby university, although there was an income test as well. The one girl who got in was a really good candidate, not exceptionally bright but hard-working. Mother has not gone to college and her father not on the scene. She always seemed to have more disposable income than me at college which I did resent a little bit though.
You’d basically have to judge someone by their immediate family and extended family, I.e. culture, to judge the degree they were disadvantaged in life. Every American basically has access to free education up to the 12th grade and beyond. Everyone has electricity, running water, access to food and libraries, the internet. What a can of worms that would open up!
I don’t think these legal rulings will make much difference.
University admissions will remain an ambiguous stew.
Blacks who look and speak like Malia will gain entry to our most prestigious universities where they can meet and perhaps marry a future investment banker who will help support a NetJets lifestyle. The American dream!
It will take many more years of costly make-believe college experiences followed by career disappointment before we shrink our college enrollments to what they should be.
> So, instead, Harvard encourages its privileged black applicants to write essays about all the white supremacist hair-touching adversity they’ve endured.
For Harvard as for the entire DEI Establishment, the key concept is "Black." "Privileged" is irrelevant. "ADOS" (Descendants of American Slaves) is an important rhetorical element for highlighting white villainy and for justifying the sins of the fathers being visited upon the 3rd and 4th generations (Exodus 34:7) -- nothing more.
The twin institutional priorities are the "percentage Black/minority enrollment" statistics, and "photographs that faithfully portray the high fraction of students and faculty with Sub-Saharan ancestry."
As Sailer has often pointed out, it is very difficult for universities to fulfill their quotas by relying on domestic production (Barbara Jordan, Thomas Sowell, Lester Holt, Craig Robinson). Imports of Igbo strivers and the offspring of high-caste Barbadians are necessary if the goals of the Five Year Plan are to be achieved.
David French and Claudine Gay's successor may not "Like" this comment.
Stanford has discovered the cause of black white test score inequality is higher white income and segregation. It seems like there is tons of studies...but they prove that heredity isn't a cause. And suggesting heredity is a cause is a thought crime.
Sorry...but I'm assuming there is an industry denying our lying eyes, and proving what they want to hear. Meanwhile they don't seem to be denying outcomes, just unobservable stuff.
So DNA actually makes a measurable difference in Sports, Academia, etc. Who knew?
But DNA is not everything.
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION ENDED! RICH WHITE LIBERALS HIT HARDEST
There is no "minoritized group" more upset about the end of AA than the rich white liberals who man the ramparts of upscale journalism and academia and who live and die by the NYT and NPR etc.
How are they supposed to be saviors without official victims to save? (Whether the "victims" like it or not.) How are they supposed to signal that they're the Good Whites who worship and adore the black/brown Wretched of the Earth as opposed to those evil fascist Bad Whites who need re-education and muzzling?
Treating black people as normal flesh-and-blood humans and not sacred symbols is going to be very difficult and disturbing for them. Next thing you know, their class pets might even disagree with them and voice different opinions...Impossible!
Racial quotas and boosts provide as much joy and purpose to the giver as to the receiver. Our liberal upper crust, passionate egalitarians all, are going to have to find new and different ways to signal their moral and intellectual superiority.
Actually, rich white liberals won't be the hardest hit family-wise, if affirmative action finished. They do it because they are brain-washed into this pseudo-altruism.
One needs to look up terms like opportunity hoarding or dream hoarding. The elite whites know how to deal with changes in requirements and standards. Also, what drives liberal whites is the fear of being called a racist.
David French is an idiot. He's a good example of what going to an Ivy League school does to the minds of people who grew up conservative. We're both from Tennessee, but I gave up on him years ago. (My son has a Harvard MBA.)
This is dumb even for French though. He knows the Ivies aren't admitting low class blacks with the possible exception of a few athletes. Hatred of the people he grew up with is what drives him. There is no one of earth he despises more than lower class rural whites.
Kevin Williamson of NATIONAL REVIEW hates his own people and rave more than French. Hate for his own people foams on his mouth.
"I mean, while The New Yorker covers Steve Sailer as a figure of fashion, it would never stoop so low as to review his book."
Steve, why do I sometimes get the feeling that you're not letting this go? Or in the words of late MLB P Jim Bouton's 2nd book, "I'm Glad You Didn't Take it Personally". And maybe thats' the key to it, in the future, uh, try not to take it personally.
I mean, getting out of Twitter jail and now being considered part of the mainstream (at least on the peripherally) is a good thing; from there and gradually over time, now your work can gradually, and slowly, start to gain some mainstream acceptance.
So ultimately try not to take it so personally, as Jim Bouton might say (or write).
"Harvard crunched the numbers on race quotas vs. class quotas and long ago discovered that class quotas don’t work as race quotas."
I'm sorry, but I honestly must've been asleep because Mr Unz kept crowing a while back that the Supreme Court ruled vs Harvard with its deliberate quota practices of increasing blacks at the expense of Asians. Didn't the Supreme Court recently rule vs Harvard? Pretty sure that they did. Therefore, even for Harvard, entrance for new students based directly on affirmative action quotas are officially verboten.
Deranged take. Steve as a public figure was and remains an eminently honest and reasonable figure. As a result of his commitment to the truth he has (and to me still seems to be) been relegated to the peripheries for decades. If he wants to complain about it the little he does, given the patience and steadfastness of his position, he is displaying the longsuffering of a saint.
We have spent many decades in a swamp of lies, and yet, Steve has maintained an entirely decent (and normal, according to the thinking of the before times) character while paying for his honesty.
The ignorance or mendacity you are displaying is staggering.
+1000. As I have written more than once, Steve has the biggest brass balls on Planet Intellectual.
Definitely, and Steve who has been isolated and pilloried for as long as I have known of him (early 2000s) remains a very calm, seemingly friendly guy. The mark of a superior personal character.
Yes he is. But it is a shame and quite strange that many of his commenters over the years have been less than charitable and like to attack different opinions. In short many (but not all) of the commenters are assholes who don't take kindly to different opinions, which is quite the opposite of the intended spirt of the First Amendment.
Unlike David French, Sailer never once sold his soul for a newspaper gig.
True. But I think Steve Sailer would consider Sam Francis as heroic.
Let's get this straight. I've probably been a commenter on Steve's writings for far longer than about 95% of commenters here, going back to almost 17 yrs. I make it a point to not start personal attacks on other commenters, because that only looks petty, idiotic, and downright f'ed up. First Amendment applies to all; we all have the right to voice our own opinions without being threatened.
Yes of course Steve has the right to feel as he does. My larger point is that he is now little by little, slowly and surely being able to return into the mainstream of commentary opinion. As a person of his generation, perhaps he believes that the established press, such as the NYT, WaPo, New Yorker, et al remain the major players in shaping public opinion in 2025. And it's his right to feel the way that he does.
In 2025, I don't believe that that is the case, namely, that these legacy opinion makers wield the same influence that they did even up to a decade ago. In case you haven't noticed, it's an internet world. More and more people are getting their news and information from alternative sources. Obviously these institutions aren't going away any time soon. They are however becoming largely irrelevant in 2025 and for the future due in large part to alternative sources to receive information.
As to your bromides regarding Steve's integrity, honesty, etc. I happen to agree 100% and have stated so numerous times over the years. I have made it explicit that his influence can't be underestimated on the conservative mvt at large, and across generations of readers.
Late last year I compared him to the 16th century Humanist scholar Disiderius Erasmus, because of his wide influence upon all sectors of US political society. Though he was well received and respected by all factions within the burgeoning Protestant Reformation for the last 20 yrs of his career, Erasmus ended up being mistrusted by all sides (one not so small reason he has to be canonized by the Catholic Church), but due to his integrity, honesty, and clarity of vision in his public writings remained true to his cause, which was above all else, the search for truth in matters of religion. I also made the parallel to Steve in that he too has had to endure many years of thankless obscurity, as well as backhanded compliments from others. I do understand and empathize with his plight. My larger point has been that slowly and surely things are starting to open up and get a little better. Obviously as humans we can sometimes get frustrated with the way things are going and that's perfectly fine to do so. But I tend to think that things are starting to open up for him and that slowly, the future is going to be far better for him than the last several years have appeared.
Recently I made the case that it would greatly help his profile if he had some friends at court, say for example, Charles Murray to champion his cause. Or, for a younger person, say Tucker Carlson. Steve appeared on Tucker's podcast so that alone should show how the tides are starting to change. I would also recommend that if Donald Trump could appear on such popular podcasters as Joe Rogan and Theo Vonn, then perhaps Steve could do the same. After all, they have been known to invite as guests different perspectives that the NYT wouldn't be caught ever entertaining as an equal in their pages.
And that remains my point: Perhaps other sources (e.g. podcasts, etc) would be one way to go for Steve to get his ideas out to reach a larger audience. As he has already appeared on Tucker Carlson, then Joe Rogan, Theo Vonn, are also within the cards in the near future. It's time to think in a different direction and both of these two carry more weight at the popular level than the legacy media outlets. I'm sure there are other newer voices, important voices out there that are starting to make a name for themselves in 2025, perhaps they will invite Steve on as well. It's time to think positive and consider new possibilities.
Finally, it will be noted: I have NEVER directly or indirectly attacked other posters first. I believe strongly in the First Amendment that people have the right to express their thoughts and opinions in safety without being threatened by others. Once we lose that part of the Constitution, Heaven help us all.
So you have a good productive start of your new day.
A lot of things that are officially verboten are perfectly doable. Remember the open border 2021-2025? On paper, that was verboten too. Did anyone care except the electorate? And even then, it was just a moderate swing across the swing states...
That's what's so frightening. Were mushy-middle voters that uninformed, or did they approve of more pet-eaters?
Mushy-middle voters were that uninformed. Most people don't get up in the morning and ask themselves - is your normal news provider telling you lies? You need a schizoid mindset to even pose that question.
That's why Soviets had it relatively easy with psychiatrization of many of their dissidents. You can even see that angle obliquely explored in Bulgakov's Master and Margarita written in the 1930s.
> I'm sorry, but I honestly must've been asleep because Mr Unz kept crowing a while back that the Supreme Court ruled vs Harvard with its deliberate quota practices of increasing blacks at the expense of Asians. Didn't the Supreme Court recently rule vs Harvard? Pretty sure that they did. Therefore, even for Harvard, entrance for new students based directly on affirmative action quotas are officially verboten.<
Verboten? LOL. The Supreme's made their ruling and Harvard responding by imposing a race-blind SAT and grades based admissions system ... oh ... wait. Actually--as Steve's pointed out about ten times Harvard responded by admitting exactly the same 14% black quota but easing off on the Asian quota letting the Asian share rocket to 38% essentially at the expense of white gentiles. (White gentiles easily the most underrepresented group at Harvard by both population share and merit.) Harvard's administration--who are they anyway?--thumbed their nose at the Supreme's can't-use-race ruling and at flyover white gentiles.
If the standards for proving illegal discrimination have been equal in most of the country for a while, why haven't there been more suits against AA/DEI? Discovery is hardly needed, there's so much public evidence. Scared of bad press? Lack of funding? Suppression by the Bar? Blue city juries killing their chances of success? Someone (probably many) will have to step up and rake in much dough to jumpstart equal treatment.
I think without Donald as POTUS, SCOTUS would have been scared sh*tless to ban AA/DEI. Remember how Chief Justice Roberts cast his vote to legalize Obamacare?
The evidentiary bar for proving you have been racially discriminated against has been much higher for whites until now: that’s what this unanimous Supreme Court decision, written to my supreme shock by Justice Ketanji Brown, was handed down to correct.
Most of the Circuits had already equalized their standards, yet there haven't been enough successful lawsuits to change corporate/govt behavior to equal treatment.
I predict those lawsuits will gain numbers and momentum soon.
There have been lawsuits against AA doing back to Bakke in the 70's. People just forget out them. See one that STeve no longer mentions. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/515/200/
Yet they've had no effect in stopping or even discouraging anti-white or anti-male bias, which have only gotten worse. Why is that?
What anti-male bias. If a selective college is 50% male, then that college or university is using affirmative action for males. This has been documented. And remember, the biggest achievement gap is between male and female black students. And there is even a gender gap when it comes to Asian students.
While there are no doubt all kinds of anti-male bias to be found at today's universities, it is no longer in the admissions department. The female numerical dominance has become so bad that such schools are unattractive to women.* David Deavel of the University of St Thomas (both USTs now) said almost a decade ago that this threatened to lead to what he called a "death spiral". It's white and Asian women who now face the discriminatory hurdle.
*Illustrative Scott Adams anecdote: he was accepted to Cornell, but chose to attend humbler Hartwick thanks to its much more favorable sex ratio. He got more dates, and an NCAA championship to boot.
The argument goes is that boys are worse at the non-cognitive part of being a student from showing up to class to doing the homework to studying for tests or remember to turn in their homework.
Of course, Steve muddles the issue by jumping between IQ, intelligent, and doing well in school without noting the differences.
> What anti-male bias. If a selective college is 50% male, then that college or university is using affirmative action for males. This has been documented.<
Uh, no. What's "been documented" is that girls consistently put up better HS grades. Boys continue to dominate in the upper reaches of the SAT. And this is true even after the 2005 torqing of the SAT to make it less IQy, more girl friendly and less predictive.
Men are simply more numerous among the "very smarts". (Not to mention they are more creative and inventive and considerable more likely to do something interesting and useful with their smarts.)
The most test score selective universities that focus on STEM--your CalTechs and MITs--have quota'd in extra girls for a couple generations now and continue to do so. HYPS is effectively doing the same when it comes to IQ, but can easily cover it by the relative weight it puts on HS grades vs. scores and verbal vs. math scores.
It is not selective schools but unselective ones--where you are down within the one SD broad mushy middle of the IQ distribution--where there are simply more girls and girls dominate in both HS grades and even--slightly--in test scores, where schools have to discriminate against girls to get something close to the desire 50/50 dating/mating balance.
Not really true. Males do slightly better in the SAT math section but there is no advantage in the verbal section.
From Richard Reeves: Overall, gender differences in combined SAT scores are less lopsided. Boys score slightly higher at the average (1032 vs. 1023). They also make up a slight majority of test takers in both the highest (57%) and the lowest (56%) deciles
A non-selective school in the U.S. will more than likely be majority male. And since public universities cannot discriminate for males, that is why schools such as UNC-Chapel Hill are 60% female. About the only public schools that are more than 50% female usually have a college of agriculture, a large college of engineering, and do not have a college of nursing.
I wonder how Mr. French’s Black! adopted daughter from Africa has performed in school? Are her SATs sufficient for admission to an elite university? Does life with David and Nancy make up for any deficiencies suffered as a result of her birth mother’s probable poor nutrition, her birth parents’ genes, and early life in an orphanage?
I’m sure the French’s have provided an optimal home environment for moral and mental development. So she has the nurture part working in her favor since the time of her adoption. So what about the nature?
I wonder how much of Mr. French’s thinking about race and racial issues have been influenced by slights and mini-aggressions suffered by his daughter? I know from reading his articles from years ago that she was the victim of such indignities. I sincerely wish the best for her and her family but I have seen firsthand my friends and associates who have adopted children from similar circumstances and the unexpected problems they have encountered.
Much of French's turn to the left is because he got a lot of hate mail regarding his daughter in 2016 when Trump trounced National Review's heartthrob, Ted Cruz.
French's son attended the University of Tennessee.
It's hard to reason well if you declare some truths off-limits. It's like a king declaring a law against blue objects. I mean sure, you can probably build a decent city that doesn't contain any blue objects. But building a city is already hard enough without adding such a stupid rule. Wouldn't it be easier to just use the most effective objects, color be damned?
Ahh David French... 🤦
"Systemic injustice will always have individual effects, and addressing those individual effects will ultimately result in systemic change."
This is pretty strained and not even good lawyer-glibness. I mean, if it's systemic that tends to imply the effects are collective; not even individual merit will raise you out of Dalit status. And the fact that some individuals in indentured servitude may have that systemic injustices addressed by attaining trusteeship or even emancipation doesn't necessarily mean the Southern planters or Greek city-states are having a come-to-Jesus moment over slavery.
His defense of the Obergefell decision is pretty fatuous as well. Obergefell is not a "civil libertarian" decision.
The idea that thousands of people are reading and furrowing their brows and thinking David French has actually put together trenchant, logical takes is as worrisome as people taking John Kerry seriously.
The White-hating owners of the New York Times keep David French around in the same way as Ramsay Bolton in Game of Thrones kept Reek. To humiliate him and as a reminder of their own power.
"Collectively, these individualized decisions can have a systemic effect. When there has been systemic injustice, individualized assessments of resilience and achievement will have a disproportionate positive effect on marginalized communities."
Does David French still pretend to be a conservative?
I talked to David French about 10 years ago. He said that you were a racist. And I have been reading you for a while. It seems as though you approach the issue of intelligence and race in accordance with people like Charles Murray, and Hernstein of course that is against the reigning orthodoxy, but I am so surprised that French has such a Blindspot. My only complaint is that you are more flippant than I am about the Israeli and Jewish question. Each individual has things that he is concerned about over others, but that does not make him necessarily awful.
George will once said that there are two grades in diving. Is for excellence in completion and the other is for the difficulty of the dive. I very much analogize that to life. I have been lucky and blessed and so perhaps I have not come as far as someone who started far behind me, but came farther in his journey
So David French thinks Steve Sailer is a "racist." French married white. Why? Was he a "racist" for not considering black women as a wife?
The problem with selecting for class or disadvantage is that you have to do it by income and/or neighbourhood.
The issue here is that income has volatile over the life cycle and people don’t always live in the same place. So you can have a kid who appears disadvantaged but there is some combination of his parents having just got divorced, losing their jobs, and/or suffering from adult health at the point Harvard does its assessment.
Likewise, every neighbourhood has a fair degree of variance around the mean income and it’s possible to find high-earning households which just haven’t bothered to move as their income has increased.
Similarly , for high school. I would not classify my upbringing as remotely disadvantaged, but I went to a high school which was just about bottom quartile by social status and had a disadvantaged status. This qualified my classmates for preferential access to the nearby university, although there was an income test as well. The one girl who got in was a really good candidate, not exceptionally bright but hard-working. Mother has not gone to college and her father not on the scene. She always seemed to have more disposable income than me at college which I did resent a little bit though.
You’d basically have to judge someone by their immediate family and extended family, I.e. culture, to judge the degree they were disadvantaged in life. Every American basically has access to free education up to the 12th grade and beyond. Everyone has electricity, running water, access to food and libraries, the internet. What a can of worms that would open up!
In my own youth I had to traipse to the public library to learn about things.
Now any 12YO with a smartphone has the sum total of human knowledge in their pocket for free!
In many ways the educational playing field has never been so level.
I don’t think these legal rulings will make much difference.
University admissions will remain an ambiguous stew.
Blacks who look and speak like Malia will gain entry to our most prestigious universities where they can meet and perhaps marry a future investment banker who will help support a NetJets lifestyle. The American dream!
It will take many more years of costly make-believe college experiences followed by career disappointment before we shrink our college enrollments to what they should be.
> So, instead, Harvard encourages its privileged black applicants to write essays about all the white supremacist hair-touching adversity they’ve endured.
For Harvard as for the entire DEI Establishment, the key concept is "Black." "Privileged" is irrelevant. "ADOS" (Descendants of American Slaves) is an important rhetorical element for highlighting white villainy and for justifying the sins of the fathers being visited upon the 3rd and 4th generations (Exodus 34:7) -- nothing more.
The twin institutional priorities are the "percentage Black/minority enrollment" statistics, and "photographs that faithfully portray the high fraction of students and faculty with Sub-Saharan ancestry."
As Sailer has often pointed out, it is very difficult for universities to fulfill their quotas by relying on domestic production (Barbara Jordan, Thomas Sowell, Lester Holt, Craig Robinson). Imports of Igbo strivers and the offspring of high-caste Barbadians are necessary if the goals of the Five Year Plan are to be achieved.
David French and Claudine Gay's successor may not "Like" this comment.
https://edopportunity.org/discoveries/white-black-differences-scores/
Stanford has discovered the cause of black white test score inequality is higher white income and segregation. It seems like there is tons of studies...but they prove that heredity isn't a cause. And suggesting heredity is a cause is a thought crime.
Sorry...but I'm assuming there is an industry denying our lying eyes, and proving what they want to hear. Meanwhile they don't seem to be denying outcomes, just unobservable stuff.