Affirmative Action Is Dead. That's A Good Thing
Stove Top #8: Affirmative Action is gone, and lots of concerning surveillance news.
Welcome back to the Stove Top weekly newsletter. Instead of the usual few brief stories, I got one long piece for you all today and a bunch of interesting stories and reads.
Enjoy!
Thoughts On Affirmative Action
As you are probably aware, affirmative action has been vaporized by our non-democratic and hyper-partisan Supreme Court.
And I think it’s a good thing. Let me explain why with a personal story, then I’ll dive into what I think can replace affirmative action.
I am half-Asian and half-White. In high school, one of my close friends was half-Black and half-White. Because we lived in the same town and went to the same schools, we lived very similar lives. Except, his family was significantly wealthier than mine.
When it came time to apply for college, I avoided checking off Asian, and he rushed to check off Black. We both had good reasons for doing so: I had a built-in hit from being Asian, and he had a built-in boost from being Black, regardless of our actual lives.
Is that not a discriminatory program?
Of course it is. There’s a reason that affirmative action is known as positive discrimination in Britain. You can argue over the “positive” part. You can’t argue over the “discrimination” part.
So, let’s discuss the “positive” argument. I think most of us would agree that 1) more diversity on campuses is a good thing and 2) many in the Black community live in uniquely difficult circumstances. But, I don’t think affirmative action is the solution so many believe it is.
And that is simply because the country is much different demographically than when affirmative action began back in the 60s and 70s. The country is no longer just black and white1.
In fact, the country is rapidly becoming multiracial2.
It appears to be inevitable that the majority of the country will eventually be interracial. How do you handle somebody 50% White, 25% Asian, and 25% Black under affirmative action? What if that kid was poor, and a 100% Black kid was rich, does the 100% Black kid get more affirmative action than the poor interracial kid? Is that right?
Theoretically, we could award affirmative action to those with more demonstrable ancestral grievances (i.e., the ancestors of slaves are given higher priority than the immigrant son of a Nigerian millionaire). But, as Noah Smith puts it, “Doing college admissions by a combination of blood quantum and econometric assumptions would turn opportunity in America into a bizarre, opaque racial spoils system of Byzantine complexity”.
It’s an extremely dystopian proposition.
There’s a reason why a strong majority of people don’t want race to be involved in college admissions3.
The question then obviously becomes, what do you replace it with?
The left’s preferred answer, and probably what we’re going to end up with since the left owns the educational system, is non-official affirmative action. Basically, de facto affirmative action, not de jure. Instead of giving you a boost purely for being Black, they’ll give you a boost for writing an essay about your experiences being Black. And if that doesn’t work, they’ll find another way to reach their desired racial quotas.
These programs are quite effective, as evidenced by UCLA’s demographic composition following the state’s banning of affirmative action in 1998.
This is bad on two fronts.
One is obvious: if you’re an opponent of affirmative action, then de facto affirmative action is your worst nightmare. It’s all the things you hate about affirmative action, except this time there’s no Court to save you.
The other is that essays becoming the arena for affirmative action would turn the college admission process even more toxic than it already is. Instead of trying to write a good essay, kids would write the most depressing racially-based essay they can think of. If they are White or Asian, then it would just be the most depressing essay they can think of. And, because most kids haven’t had an Odyssey yet at 18, many would have to fabricate their essays.
This already happens. My friend’s sister’s husband got into Harvard by his own account largely because of his essay in which he lied about his parents being abusive drug addicts. That’s obviously a fucked up thing to do, but in a world in which your essay determines admission, this will become much more common. The best-case scenario is you are breeding a population of lying scumbags. The worst-case scenario is admissions aren’t based on merit, but merely on who has the best imagination.
So, moving on.
The most discussed answer is a class-based affirmative action. There are good reasons to support this vision. It would solve the issue of affirmative action in a multiracial society. It would get rid of legacy and donor admissions, which for some inexplicable reason is still a thing. And, there’s a good argument to be made that poor kids are the demographic actually most in need of help.
Overall, it’s a very solid idea.
But it doesn’t solve the fundamental issue: college admissions, especially to the elite schools, is a zero-sum game. Anybody that gets in is keeping somebody else out. That is the purpose of affirmative action: to ensure a certain number of Black (and to a lesser extent, Hispanic) students get into elite schools. And that’s why it causes grief among Asians, because in order to admit more Black people, you have to admit fewer Asian people.
This is what affirmative action advocates don’t understand. People don’t dislike affirmative action because it gets Black people into schools, they dislike affirmative action because it keeps them out of schools.
So, why not just solve for the root issue? I believe this is a two-step process. First, you have to increase the number of people going to the top schools. Second, you have to progressively devalue “prestige” in our culture.
On the first point, consider that Harvard admitted 1370 out of 5200 applications for the class of 1965. That’s a rate of 26%. Last year, Harvard admitted 1984 out of 61,221 applicants. That’s a rate of 3.24%. Is there any good reason for this drop beyond stroking the egos of Harvard’s administrators and board?
Now consider that the US’s population has increased by 82% since 1961, but Harvard’s class size has only increased by 44%. Again, is there any good reason for this beyond the pursuit of “prestige”?
If Harvard kept pace with the population increase, they would have admitted 2493 applications. And, if they maintained a 26% acceptance rate, they would have admitted 15,860 applicants. Wouldn’t that make things so much easier? It’s not like they can’t afford it with their $51B endowment.
Again, the only reason they don’t is because of the desire for prestige. This toxic desire must be eradicated, but that’s a process that will realistically take years.
So, in the meantime, let’s get more kids into the top schools. Doing so will help solve the shortfalls of affirmative action and begin to pick away at the illusion of prestige by bringing these schools more in line with the others.
Bringing us one step closer to the dream of a truly meritocratic and egalitarian society4.
Extras
The most popular disposable vape is not FDA-approved.
Companies are now using military-grade surveillance tools to spy on employees. What is the world coming to man.
Oh, and AI is being used as a surveillance tool too, which is something that experts are extremely concerned about. Same.
Thankfully, some musicians are now boycotting venues that use facial recognition tech.
Unfortunately, NYC business owners aren’t as based. They want to follow in Britain’s footsteps and use facial recognition tech to prevent shoplifting, which I can understand, but why not just, I don’t know, hire more security?
The EU now wants to put spyware on the phones of journalists. What a joke of a political body.
The last AI boom didn’t kill jobs. I hope this one is the same, but I have doubts.
The office real estate market is fucked.
And Airbnb in certain areas of the country might be too.
People, learn how to fucking drive your car.
Your phone is spying AND social scoring on you.
This is the stupidest headline I’ve read in a long time. If you're upset about having lower pay than the people with college degrees, then go get a college degree.
Our aging population is a drag on economic growth. Thankfully, the solution is actually really simple: we need to have more babies and more immigration.
Biden is doing a good thing by finally forcing cable-TV firms to advertise their actual prices. Now we just have to get rid of the bundle.
The animators who worked on SpiderVerse are complaining about their work conditions. And, to be fair, it does appear those conditions really sucked. However, considering that their job will most likely be made nonexistent by AI in the next decade, I think they should try to appreciate these times while they have them.
Required mid-work-day naps would be so awesome.
AI is starting to rear its ugly head in elections.
Fun (and disturbing) fact of the week: FDR deported up to 1.8 million people of Mexican descent, most of them American-born, during the Great Depression in order to free up jobs for white people. They don’t teach you this in the history books, and I don’t think I need to explain why. But man, if Nixon pulled any shit like this, best believe everyone would know about it.
Surprise surprise, royals are only interesting because they are royals. If Prince Harry was born regular Harry, there is not a chance in hell he’s A) married to Meghan Markle and B) famous.
Ireland isn’t for the people.
If you use a Bluetooth car battery monitor, you are being spied on.
According to the IMF, corporate profits account for almost half of Europe’s inflation over the past two years.
Space Force wants to stop being treated like a joke.
40% of Californians are considering bouncing from the state. I wonder why.
There is about to be a major UPS strike.
Google has now joined Meta in hating Canada.
Pornhub is spying on you.
National Geographic has laid off its staff writers. It’s a bad time to be a full-time writer.
The multi-billion dollar AI industry is maintained by people making peanuts. Yet, Marc Andreessen believes that AI won’t further inequality. Lmao.
The Chinese Spy Balloon used American tech. Gotta give this one to the China hawks.
YouTube wants to get rid of ad blockers. Fuck that.
The idea of a “part-time creator” is so stupid. I don’t care what Greg Isenberg tells you, you’re not making any significant amount of money from “creating” for 2 hours a week.
The Supreme Court struck down Biden’s student loan forgiveness program. It hurts, but it’s most likely the right call from a legal standpoint, and definitely the right call from a political standpoint (which shouldn’t matter in the Court, but whatever). A society where people don’t feel the need to repay their debts isn’t a functioning one, regardless of how unfair that debt may be.
But this doesn’t change the fact that this is really going to hurt.
The South now contributes more to GDP than the Northeast. NYC propagandists, please just stop.
The US Online Safety Bill is an absolute travesty.
Until next time, ✌️
Hit me up on Twitter!
https://www.pewresearch.org/next-america/
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/02/25/in-vice-president-kamala-harris-we-can-see-how-america-has-changed/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/22/race-college-admissions-poll-results/
Unfortunately, this is very unlikely to happen, because “prestige” is the only thing keeping the Ivy League the Ivy League. These days, every college gives basically the same quality of education as any other college. The only reason to go to an Ivy over a state school is because they have the prestige, reputation, and network of an Ivy. If they lose this by coming more toward the middle, then they lose what makes them “special”. So, outside of an immense grassroots movement (unlikely) or the government forcing them (don’t want this), I don’t see how my vision for a better affirmative action comes to life.