Cont: The Trump Presidency VIII

[The Don]

President Trump will scrap affirmative action:

The Trump administration is set to roll back the Obama-era policies promoting diversity in universities, known as affirmative action, US media report.

US Attorney General Jeff Sessions revoked 24 guidance documents on Tuesday, many involving race in schools and affirmative action recommendations.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44703874

Will we see states being allowed to implement segregation laws if thy choose to do so if Donald Trump is still President in 2024 ?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

We are in a surreal world. We moved so far ahead with Obama, things were looking great, promising, there were no 'issues' except the lies the GOP kept promoting, like how bad the ACA supposedly was. He wasn't perfect, but he was intelligent and at least qualified for the job.

And now the backlash we get is Trump and overwhelming racism. It's stunning.

 

[Octavo]

President Trump will scrap affirmative action:



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44703874

Will we see states being allowed to implement segregation laws if thy choose to do so if Donald Trump is still President in 2024 ?

Prediction: Asian-American students displace white students at uni.

Dump should follow the South African model - demand that university demographics are representative of the population. That way he can keep all the gooks out.

 

[Octavo]

We are in a surreal world. We moved so far ahead with Obama, things were looking great, promising, there were no 'issues' except the lies the GOP kept promoting, like how bad the ACA supposedly was. He wasn't perfect, but he was intelligent and at least qualified for the job.

And now the backlash we get is Trump and overwhelming racism. It's stunning.

I would like to think of the winds of politics being pendulum like. After a swing to the left, the pendulum starts to swing right. The analogy comforts me with the implication that this too will pass. Of course, then I can't help imagine Putin with a finger on the pendulum.

 

[The Don]

Prediction: Asian-American students displace white students at uni.

Dump should follow the South African model - demand that university demographics are representative of the population. That way he can keep all the gooks out.

You're probably right at some universities. At some others, I can foresee a very monochromatic student body coming about.

 

[The Don]

I would like to think of the winds of politics being pendulum like. After a swing to the left, the pendulum starts to swing right. The analogy comforts me with the implication that this too will pass. Of course, then I can't help imagine Putin with a finger on the pendulum.

Over the last 50, 100, 150 years there has been a pendulum but there has also been a consistent move to greater human rights within the general variability

In some cases I think that a high water mark has been reached in the US - at least in my lifetime. I cannot see workers' rights ever getting back to where they were when employment models were different and organised labour was strong - it's a separate argument whether stronger workers' rights benefited the economy as a whole (I would tend to say yes, free marketeers would sey no).

Perhaps we are now approaching "peak tolerance" and over the next few decades we'll see a gradual scaling back of human rights in the US. IMO it won't be on a national level but I can certainly foresee individual states having far more latitude to implement apparently discriminatory laws and as long as they are discriminatory in favour of the "right" kind(s) of people, a SCOTUS with a more conservative bias may rule that the states are entitled to do so and the federal government over-reached itself in forcing integration, gay marriage, secularism and so on onto unwilling states.

Then again perhaps not.

 

[Aridas]

...Yet more evidence that the GOP hates democracy. To take an excerpt...

Only a conservative would argue that letting someone drink from the same water fountain as you is infringing on their “rights”.

The Washington Post has the old and new standards side-by-side so you can see all the redlining that was done. The Montgomery bus boycott, the March on Washington, and the Voting Rights Act were deleted. The historic role the NAACP played in the Civil Rights movement was downplayed, as well as all references to Roe v. Wade. Orwell at its best: you never fight for rights if you never learn you have them. Speaking of which:

Lest you think that only the term “core democratic principles” were redlined—no dice. Not only do the new standards wipe out the term “democratic”, they delete the term “democracy” as well.

The justification, according to Colbeck, is that the United States is not a democracy, but a republic—a line that is often repeated by conservatives. It is false: America is, and always has been, a representative democracy. At least, that’s what it is supposed to be, and will hopefully remain that after the Trump years.

But that isn’t why Colbeck did this at all. That’s not what this is really all about. The media won’t call this out, even though the GOP has openly declared what they are doing.

As conservative author David Frum admits, the new GOP hates democracy, because, in his own words:

The Republican party has a platform that can’t prevail in democratic competition.

WHEN HIGHLY COMMITTED PARTIES BELIEVE STRONGLY [IN] THINGS THAT THEY CANNOT ACHIEVE DEMOCRATICALLY, THEY DON’T GIVE UP THEIR BELIEFS — THEY GIVE UP ON DEMOCRACY

 

[Fast Eddie B]

You're probably right at some universities. At some others, I can foresee a very monochromatic student body coming about.

Affirmative Action is one of those concepts I’m on the fence about.

On the one hand, I applaud the diversity it brings about. Yay!

On the other hand, being denied college entrance or a job because of the color of one’s skin seems patently unfair, at least at the individual level. And tipping the scales in favor of less qualified applicants has to, on average, affect the quality of the students entering or workers employed or whatever. Boo!

But flame suit on - I know sometimes it’s hard to put forth a nuanced or conflicted position here.

 

[Mumbles]

We are in a surreal world. We moved so far ahead with Obama, things were looking great, promising, there were no 'issues' except the lies the GOP kept promoting, like how bad the ACA supposedly was. He wasn't perfect, but he was intelligent and at least qualified for the job.

And now the backlash we get is Trump and overwhelming racism. It's stunning.

Y'all should have expected the racism - that's what always follows when black people move forward in the US.

I have to admit, though, it's as if the US picked the worst white guy they could find just to show that he'd do a better job than Obama, though. I expected the hostility towards black and hispanic people, but the other profoundly stupid things he's doing...that's impressive.

 

[Mumbles]

Affirmative Action is one of those concepts I’m on the fence about.

On the one hand, I applaud the diversity it brings about. Yay!

On the other hand, being denied college entrance or a job because of the color of one’s skin seems patently unfair, at least at the individual level. And tipping the scales in favor of less qualified applicants has to, on average, affect the quality of the students entering or workers employed or whatever. Boo!

But flame suit on - I know sometimes it’s hard to put forth a nuanced or conflicted position here.

It's a band-aid to treat a knife wound that hit a major organ. The ideal was/is heavy investment in minority communities to make up for the long, and in many ways ongoing, draining of wealth at the state and federal level, but that never happened in the first place. Do that, and we don't have to worry about the effect it has on the kids of wealthy Asian immigrants, who really do face the biggest disadvantage as as far as which racial groups are effected by AA programs.

But lots of folks would rather be homeless than see black people also prosper, sooo...

(I'll also point out, yet again, that these guys are never at all upset by "legacy admissions", and in many cases openly enjoy it's benefits, and that white women are largely considered the group that has benefited from AA programs the most.)

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

It's also worth pointing out that equally-qualified non-white people aren't playing on a level playing field. A few people have done the same test - created CVs which are identical except that one is for a person with a typically white name and the other is for a person with a typically non-white name - and sent them out to businesses that are hiring, and have unfailingly found that the businesses are a lot more interested in the "white applicants" than they are in the "non-white applicants".

And this doesn't even have to be intentional. Everybody has an unconscious bias towards people who look like them, or who they otherwise perceive as being part of the same tribal group. Affirmative action is designed to compensate for this unconscious bias and, a few years down the line, eliminate it simply by having the demographics of the people doing the hiring matching the demographics of the society in which the company exists.

This also goes for the fact that the majority of jobs aren't filled by job adverts and interviewing random candidates, but by someone in the company bringing in someone they already know. If the company is staffed by middle-class white blokes who know middle-class white blokes, then new hires will be middle-class white blokes.

There are several ways in which the deck is stacked against non-white people getting jobs, particularly jobs with bigger companies, or above a certain level. Affirmative action is designed to level the playing field and to ultimately give everybody the same opportunity as everybody else.

 

[Mumbles]

There are several ways in which the deck is stacked against non-white people getting jobs, particularly jobs with bigger companies, or above a certain level. Affirmative action is designed to level the playing field and to ultimately give everybody the same opportunity as everybody else.

AA isn't much of a thing outside of college admissions. In the job market, high-school level broadly discriminate based on skin color - to the point of being black have a more negative effect than having a felony record (anyone can google the name "Devah Prager" to find multiple studies on this in different metropolitan areas). At a professional level, employers often recruit from specific universities, or via social networks - and since most white people have exactly 0 nonwhite friends...

And while many employers try to compensate for the above via recruitment efforts pushed by upper-level managers, new hires often find hostility among their fellow employees and direct management - tech companies like Google are notorious for issues like this. And I'm picking Google specifically because of that one guy who decided to send around an email about women at the company, and then made money after being let go when it went public. The fact that he basically ruined his own chances of working alongside women, much less actually being a project leader on any team with women on it, kinda slipped by him.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

Affirmative action is designed to level the playing field and to ultimately give everybody the same opportunity as everybody else.

Worthy ultimate goal. But an immediate effect can be someone not getting into school, or not getting a job, solely because they’re white, or the “wrong” minority.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

Real world example...

I forget the exact figures, but when I tested to work for Dade County, FL, a white applicant needed to score 90% on the entrance test, Hispanics 85% and blacks 75%. I was smart enough to get in, but a white applicant could have been denied a job that was given to a less qualified applicant. Seems like discrimination on the basis of race to me, something we should try to avoid.

I realize the alternative was to have a mostly white police force policing a mostly black area, which brings along its own set of issues.

Only to point out why I’m conflicted.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Worthy ultimate goal. But an immediate effect can be someone not getting into school, or not getting a job, solely because they’re white, or the “wrong” minority.

I'm not saying it's a perfect solution. But, since the alternative is also people not getting into school or not getting a job solely because of their race...

 

[Fast Eddie B]

I'm not saying it's a perfect solution. But, since the alternative is also people not getting into school or not getting a job solely because of their race...

I think the desired alternative is people getting into school or getting jobs solely based on testing, qualifications and ability, in a way free of bias for or against any race, creed, color, sexual orientation, etc. etc.

 

[pgwenthold]

Real world example...

I forget the exact figures, but when I tested to work for Dade County, FL, a white applicant needed to score 90% on the entrance test, Hispanics 85% and blacks 75%. I was smart enough to get in, but a white applicant could have been denied a job that was given to a less qualified applicant. Seems like discrimination on the basis of race to me, something we should try to avoid.

I realize the alternative was to have a mostly white police force policing a mostly black area, which brings along its own set of issues.

Only to point out why I’m conflicted.

But if you set the cutoffs all at 90% and found that 50% of white applicants passed, 30% of Hispanic applucants passed, and 10% of black applicants passed, what would think? "Black people just aren't as smart"? Or "the test is systematically biased against black people"?

Unless you assume black people are just inferior, you should figure there is an issue with the test.

This is why the alternate percentages are used.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

My best guess is blacks were disadvantaged because of an inferior school system, for whatever reason. Hispanics I’m less sure about.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

I think the desired alternative is people getting into school or getting jobs solely based on testing, qualifications and ability, in a way free of bias for or against any race, creed, color, sexual orientation, etc. etc.

What's your suggestion for how to achieve that?

 

[Mumbles]

But if you set the cutoffs all at 90% and found that 50% of white applicants passed, 30% of Hispanic applucants passed, and 10% of black applicants passed, what would think? "Black people just aren't as smart"? Or "the test is systematically biased against black people"?

Unless you assume black people are just inferior, you should figure there is an issue with the test.

This is why the alternate percentages are used.

Well, policing has problems that vastly outweigh the skin color of the police themselves first, which is why so many black people will state outright that black police are even more violent than white police are.

Second, want to change this? It'll take a massive investment into k-12 schooling, environmental cleanup, and medical care including prenatal care (and Dolt 45 is trying his hardest to make things worse in all of these). When it comes to testing, we don't know of much that will boost people, but we definitely know of a lot that will harm them - and all of these are unevenly distributed due to our own ongoing history of racism in the US.

And again, tough sell when a good portion of the country would rather starve as long as they can think that they're still better off than black/hispanic/Native Americans are.