Clarence Thomas is one of the more startling examples of the "fuck you, I got mine" generation. How do you go from being in the black panthers to this?
Edit: Grammar
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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Money. The answer is money.
For sure, a lot of it is money, but he is also on a 30+ year revenge tour right now and will seemingly vote for anything horrible. This man was one of the pioneers when it comes to burning it all down to own the libs.
They get recommended pretty frequently, but the Behind the Bastards podcast did a pretty good review of who Clarence Thomas is and how he got to be that way.
Part 1/4 can be found here: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-the-clarence-thomas-story-99759984/
"The liberals made my life miserable for 43 years, and I'm going to make their lives miserable for 43 years."
Paywalled, but didn't folks "make him miserable" because he sexually assaulted someone?
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There’s a recent Frontline documentary about his life. He (and Ginni) are the worst.
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Oh good, they finally legally mandated color blindness. Historic and pervasive systemic racism is solved once and for all thanks to the Supreme Court issuing an edict that it shouldn't exist. Huzzah!
They should legally mandate the nonexistence of poverty next. They can solve all the problems America has in a few weeks this way.
Affirmative action is racist. Two wrongs don't make a right.
No context is needed.
Affirmation action mandates a historically and currently racist society to demonstrate commitment to end subversive racist policies.
Declaring everyone equal under the law doesn't begin to put forth the required effort to actually make the country a more equitable place.
Affirmation action mandates a historically and currently racist society to demonstrate commitment to end subversive racist policies.
Maybe, but with some amount of collateral damage that will never be truly avoidable, because it’s still a system explicitly based on race. Society can never fully heal under a system like that. It can make some progress, but that progress has arguably already been largely achieved and somewhat plateaued; continuing an upward trajectory now requires different tactics.
Declaring everyone equal under the law doesn’t begin to put forth the required effort to actually make the country a more equitable place.
That was true at one point, but a lot has changed since that time.
If you think a few decades of asking some institutions to diversify their population based on some criteria other than test scores has run its course and we're in a position to move on to some other policy, you're going to not only need to describe that policy going forward but you'll also have to explain exactly what makes you think racism in this country is sufficiently dead enough to justify that position.
Because from where I sit, racism and bigotry are very much alive and well in this country, and I have no reason to believe that things won't revert to pre-civil rights sentiment. In a lot of places, it already has. In others, that never went away.
That was true at one point, but a lot has changed since that time.
Like what? They stopped stacking black people like cordwood into boats and selling them like property? They stopped lynching black kids for looking at a white woman on the street? They stopped writing language into land deals that keeps black people out of the suburbs? They stopped dumping crack into black neighborhoods to keep them incarcerated? They stopped denying black people loans to build equity and wealth? They stopped unofficial policies about hiring whites over blacks? They stopped demonizing black culture? They stopped shooting black kids for being in the wrong neighborhood?
Please, do tell me that all these things are in the distant past, no longer relevant, and shouldn't be in the smallest way considered when admissions looks at thousands of perfect test scores and says "we can't fit them all in, so let's try to have a diverse group here to represent us and provide some much-needed opportunity for a historically oppressed people, in whatever small way we can."
Please, tell me that we are past affirmative action, and why.
but that progress has arguably already been largely achieved and somewhat plateaued; continuing an upward trajectory now requires different tactics.
What "progress" are you talking about, exactly? Quantify your claim, please.
If I suppressed your people's ability to create generational wealth for hundreds of years and suddenly stopped, would that be enough? Is everything better now? Or should you be compensated in some way?
Compensated at the expense of whom though?
The taxpayers? Sure, there's an argument for reparations and pumping money into forcing systemic change.
College students competing for a limited number of slots to schools? I'm less convinced of this, it's a zero-sum game where if you're admitting one person you're denying others from that slot.
IMO there's probably better ways you could incentivize colleges to aim for a diverse student body that would be more equitable. The goal should equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes.
Affirmative action is an opportunity, the opportunity to go to a prestigious college.
It's not equality outcomes.
Equality of outcomes would look like UBI.
Equality of outcomes would look like UBI.
@EffectivelyHidden UBI just puts a floor on how far one can financially fall, it improves the minimum possible outcome. It does not provide equality of outcomes. Some UBI recipients will have higher incomes and more wealth than others.
Certainly a better starting place than what we have now.
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Correct.
But you can't fix inequality by treating everyone equally.
The people who are already at an advantage will just continue to grow that advantage, while the people at a disadvantage will fall farther and farther behind.
That's why, despite being found repeatedly to be a form of racial discrimination, affirmative action was previously found to meet the standard of Strict Scrutiny on dozens of occasions. The Supreme Court backtracked on decades of rulings today.
You only don't like context because it, like so many things, is inconvenient to your ideology. Cant' have things like facts and nuance, no sir.
How would you address the systematic under-representation of certain ethnicities in higher education?
Certainly affirmative action is a blunt instrument. What are your preferred solutions?
•AA benefitted white women more than all other groups COMBINED—plaintiffs never complained about that
•43% of white Harvard students are legacy or athlete students, of which 75% would not be admitted otherwise—plaintiffs never complained about that
•Asians are 6% of the population & 26% of Harvard admissions—plaintiffs never complained about that
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No context is needed.
Let's say your neighbor stole your lawn mower. You petition to the court to get it back. The court receives your request the you want your neighbor to give you the lawn mower in their possession. You would argue that the judge should only decide on whether you should get your neighbor's lawn mower while excluding the context that they stole it?
You: I want my neighbor to give me the Ryobi lawn mower in their shed.
Judge: Based on what grounds?
You: No context is needed.
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The same reasoning worked wonders when Justice Roberts told us that racism was over and gutted the Voting Rights Act. Nothing bad came of that except rampant gerrymandering, voter suppression, and minority rule!
Probably going to get downvoted for this, but I tend to agree that AA, as it stood, had run its course. Getting rid of it now clears the way for new and better solutions.
When I read these excerpts from this article https://news.northeastern.edu/2023/06/29/supreme-court-affirmative-action/ - I get a strong sense that AA really just allowed schools to be lazy.
“Universities all across the country will begin to experiment with a whole variety of admissions techniques that are race-neutral in the sense that race is not an explicit factor, but not race-neutral in the sense that they’re intended to produce diversity,” says Jeremy R. Paul, a professor of law and former dean of the Northeastern University School of Law.
Paul says many universities are going to have to up their recruitment efforts, increase partnerships with community colleges and high-poverty high schools, and invest more in scholarships and financial aid.
“These are things that universities will want to do anyway, because they’re good things to do,” Paul says.
Dan Urman, director of the law and public policy minor at Northeastern, who teaches courses on the Supreme Court, says the ruling means that universities will have to redouble their efforts to maintain diverse student bodies. Urman says there are examples of states opting out of affirmative action policies to mixed results.
“My home state of California abolished affirmative action in 1996 in a vote called Proposition 209, and California universities spent a lot of time and resources recruiting, establishing programs,” he says. “They were able to get diversity, not back to where it was before … but let’s say they were able to avoid some of the worst predictions of what would happen to diversity.”
One potential solution to maintain diversity are so-called percentage plans, where students who graduate at the top of their classes at each respective high school are guaranteed spots in universities. The first percentage plan was signed into law in 1997 in Texas by then-Gov. George W. Bush. It permits any student from “a Texas public high school in the top 10% of his or her class to get into any Texas public college, without any SAT or ACT score.”
Except anything remotely better will be dismissed out of hand as "woke" and never see the light of day.
I’m not so sure. I understand your cynicism but I don’t share it just yet.
Systemic bigotry isn't a byproduct, it's the point. See the now infamous quote from Lee Atwater. Content warning-- racial slurs.
Do you not follow the news or something? What indicators have you seen/read that give you optimism?
I understand where garretw87 is coming from here with the cautious optimism. Unlike the Voting Rights Act (section 4, iirc) that was struck down a few years ago and then multiple republican-led state legislatures immediately moved to find ways to disenfranchise any demographic they deemed to vote democrat, these race-conscious policies are a result from internal motivations and commitment to diversity.
Nothing is going to make Harvard enact a policy that it doesn't ultimately believe in (although we clearly see that court cases can dissolve existing policies). And even if the laws say that Harvard's goals of increasing diversity can't be through race-conscious admissions, then Harvard can and will find another signifier than race to achieve its goals. One way may be to add points during the review process to an applicant who reports that their family received social benefits, or maybe even go so far as to demarcate a map of zip codes and add points if an applicant grew up in specific communities that are well known for specific demographics.
I anticipate that something like this that is broadly defined but catches prevalence for certain ethnic groups while not being exclusive to any one ethnic group could be the way for Harvard to continue recruitment and achieve its diversity goals.
Also, before my comment here gets reduced down to " OP assumes all X race must be poor, hurr durr" I want to add that there is a small batch of elite high schools in America that recruit very talented students of all races from some of the poorest communities (the Bronx, Appalachia, South side Chicago, etc.) that extend generous scholarship packages for room, board, and tuition from which universities like Harvard are recruiting about half of its prospective diversity students. To put all the focus on universities for being race-conscious is to turn a blind eye that there exist private high schools that are doing the same thing.
This is exactly right. There have been various interviews with college admissions directors over the past year, and they pretty much all said the same thing. To paraphrase, "We expect that AA will be struck down. If we can't directly ask about race on the application, then we will achieve the same result by indirect means".
AA opponents mistakenly believe that colleges will now be forced to consider only grades and test scores. Nothing could be further from the truth.
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Yeah, par for the course the current POS SCOTUS.
What a massive win for Asian Americans! They'll finally be allowed to apply to universities and jobs across the nation without facing legal systemic racial discrimination. I'm surprised by the negativity in here. It's 2023. It's time to end systemic racial discrimination in America.
If it wasn't for bad faith, you'd have none at all.
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Took them long enough to make racial discrimination illegal for college admissions.
Such a disingenuous interpretation of affirmative action.
.... not really....?
Obviously I wouldn't expect a right wing edgelord to understand most any topic beyond the depth of a puddle
An analysis of student records by Students for Fair Admissions, a conservative activist group representing Asian American students in the lawsuit against Harvard, found that the institution, on average, rated Asian American applicants lower in personality and likability ratings than others.<
I didn't see that approach coming, but I guess I should have. Conservatives have always argued that affirmative action was racist, but racist against white folks. Now they've found a non-white group that they could argue was discriminated against based on race.
Oh yeah, that's what this case has always been. Cynical conservatives used a group of well-meaning Asian students to push their hateful, bigoted agenda. Exploiting minorities is what these people do best.
Some of the people celebrating this have the notion that it will primarily help white kids. I suspect these people will be in for a rude awakening.
It helps rich white kids. A group that we really need to think about helping more because they have it so tough.
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I'm sure everyone supporting this decision is also for making legacy admissions, college prep, and AP courses illegal too. Or is it only racist when the outcome favors people of color?
I'm not a fan of this ruling. Not on the merits, but on the results.
Affirmative Action fell into the "Equity" column in that "Equality - Equity - Justice" spectrum. Remember that comic with the baseball game, a fence, and 3 kids of varying heights trying to watch?
Equality says they can all go to the fence and try to watch, and everyone gets a box to stand on, though, even with the box, the shortest kid can't see over the fence.
Equity says that everyone gets boxes of varying heights so they can all see over the fence.
Justice advocates replacing the fence with a chain-link fence tat everyone can see through without the need for boxes in the first place.
It's nice to pretend that we don't need boxes, and racism is "over", but that's just pretending.
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I have mixed feelings about this ruling.
Affirmative action was trying to compensate for implicit anti-minority bias with explicit pro-minority bias. Today in many places, Republicans have outlawed even teaching people that this implicit bias exists with their war on critical race theory. There's a troubling recent resurgence of open racism on the right. We clearly haven't fixed the problem.
And yet, fighting institutionalized racism with institutionalized racism seems very hypocritical to me. It's much like how murder is illegal yet many states implement the death penalty. If we want our society to be a meritocracy we shouldn't grant opportunities based on the intersection of socioeconomics and genetics. This would presumably lead to a system where political and ethnic groups fight over which groups are disadvantaged and by how much, and whom the rules should favor, if it hasn't already, (the arguments made regarding Asian applicants presented in this case seem a lot like this.)
Clearly some groups were directly historically disadvantaged by the state, most notably African Americans and Native Americans. The government that did this to them should have responsibility for the consequences of these injustices, and not unrelated universities. If we are to target aid in a racial way it would make sense to do it as reparations targeted at the groups that were disadvantaged in a racial way, rather than forcing colleges to abandon meritocracy. If anything I want colleges to be more meritocratic, to the point of no longer letting people in for being legacies or donors.
Although racial disparities aren't fixed, addressing it this way is illegal and problematic. It seems the only viable alternative left to address remaining social inequities is to elevate all socioeconomically disadvantaged people in a colorblind way.
As for colleges, if they want to avoid racial bias they could omit racial identifiers and correlates like the name and location of the applicant and choose their students in a truly colorblind and meritocratic way, because without such identifiers implicit biases can't be expressed.
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