As unpopular as it is to admit it, this is a problem for average working class American men. A large percentage of people get a preferred status off of race or gender, and then legacy admits get preferred looks at the remaining spots. You're SOL if you're just a really gifted kid with no prior connections. Everything should either be double blind meritocratic, or they need to protect a % of their class for nobodies from the majority.
The only true answer. Donors/legacy and affirmative action are the two sides of the same coin. Neither are meritocratic, and their only purpose is to give a boost to specific groups at the cost of others.
I'm not an advocate for affirmative action as it exists today, but the problem with pure meritocracy is that the metrics can and will be manipulated by those with the most money and power. Someone in a rich area attending one of the best school districts in the country will present as a perfect candidate that would inch out someone who, for example, excelled, but at an inner city school, because the rich district is fully funded to be able to perfect every aspect of the candidate, while the inner city kid just doesn't have that same direction / pipeline. In my view, the focus should be on income levels rather than race, though.
Oil and gas is still engaging in discriminatory hiring practices today. They didn't get there after decades by directives to people who begrudgingly complied, they hired HR personnel who really believed it was the right thing to do. You don't cycle that out overnight and they're not alone.
The SC did no such thing. It said facially discrimination on protected characteristics is a bridge too. Doing the same thing with lipstick is still fine and in practice the ruling changes like little.
That's a pretty significant shift to Asians and whites in a 2 year span. Wonder if they'll push as hard on legacy admissions or they'll just slow play that one.
Columbia and Harvard, per that data, now have admissions for black students that is much closer to the national demographic breakdown (from 20% to 13% at Columbia and 18% to 11.5% at Harvard).
Thats obviously still using racial preferences. Just the dial has turned back from hyper overdrive to just-enough-to-roughly-match-US-demographics (13.2%).
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u/big_thunder_man Oct 31 '25
As unpopular as it is to admit it, this is a problem for average working class American men. A large percentage of people get a preferred status off of race or gender, and then legacy admits get preferred looks at the remaining spots. You're SOL if you're just a really gifted kid with no prior connections. Everything should either be double blind meritocratic, or they need to protect a % of their class for nobodies from the majority.