The court is hearing the absurd case of Abigail Fisher, a white student who claims she was denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin because of affirmative action. It’s a case that should have been dismissed for pure patent ridiculousness, but now we know why it’s been allowed before the highest court in the land: because Antonin Scalia is a fucking racist. He wants to argue that maybe black students are just a little slower and less intelligent than the white students. Send them to lesser schools, instead.
There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less advanced school, a less a slower track school where they do well. One of, one of the briefs pointed out that most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas… They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them…I’m just not impressed by the fact that the University of Texas may have too fewer. Maybe it ought to have too fewer. And maybe some, you know, when you take more, the number of blacks, really competent blacks admitted to lesser schools, turns out to be less. I don’t think it stands to reason that it’s a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible.
The American Supreme Court, ladies and gentlemen.
Shorter Scalia: You black students are just too stupid and don’t deserve to go to the good schools with the white students. Who are better students than you. Because they’re white.
A few generations ago, weren’t they making the same argument about Italians and other south and east Europeans?
eggmoidal @2: Well, yeah, but that was injustice. Now that Antonin Scalia is happy with the status quo, that must mean everything is fixed. We’re living in the best of all possible worlds!
Even worse, a lower court found conclusively that she wouldn’t have gotten into UT even if she’d been a minority – her record wasn’t good enough for admission, period. And she then went and got a degree at another college, so she doesn’t have standing for any lasting damage. And yet, a majority of the Supreme Court decided it was worth their limited time to hear this case.
Roberts also asked today how it adds diverse viewpoints to, say, physics, to add minorities in the classroom. I hope that was a strong signal to the defense that they can’t just use “diversity is good for everyone” as an argument – one of the main reasons for affirmative action is to rectify the lifetime of racism people have already gone through that knocks them down by the time they apply for college. (that is, it’s not about how good it is for white kids in the class to hear someone else’s view as much as it’s about making sure the other kid gets a fighting chance to be in the room in the first place for their own education)
To add to the confusion, Justice Kagan has recused herself due to the fact that she worked on the case when she was with the Justice Department. Consideration of race helps to get POC into top state universities.
The case might end in a 4-4 tie, in which case it only applies to U. Texas. It needs a majority to apply nation-wide.
Maybe conservative justices are just too stupid to think, so they make worse decisions and write terrible arguments which they try to make look less stupid by using a thesaurus.
@ carlie:
I know it’s a minor quibble, but per (usual) SC rules, it only takes four of the nine to issue a writ of certioari. Not a majority.
[/pedantry]
Holy shit this is vile. Seems not just arguing for separate but equal (which was never really equal and which would be a gross injustice anyway). Rather he’s being explicit that it should be separate but unequal or “less advanced.”
Is it time to impose term limits of some kind?
@ Nerd:
I for one am looking forward to when Kagan doesn’t have to be so goddamn conscientious (i.e. cases stop involving things she’s directly worked on). Fucking ethics. >:(
Scalia is just asking questions, of course. He’s not actually a racist. One of his favorite colleagues is black!
I would like to petition the court with this comment.
Is Obama going to get to appoint anyone else to the court? Or are they all going to come up while Trump’s running things?
Fixed
“too fewer”?
What school did they send Scalia to?
@5 She really shouldn’t have. The conservative justices don’t care about conflicts of interest, they were appointed for their conflicts of interest.
@14, Scalia is a barely literate internet troll who leans on a thesaurus to try to not sound dumb. I mean he used “applesauce” to mean nonsense. This is a historical usage from the 1920s, that was slang. The only way he could have possibly picked it is out of a thesaurus. Same with “jiggery pokery”. I’m not entirely convinced that Scalia didn’t make up his degrees. (Not a serious accusation with the last line, but still.)
@15 and then I glarbled my post exposing myself as a hypocrit. (Reasons not to post at 5:15am)
PZ, you’re way off base here.
It’s intellectually lazy to assume our ideological opponents are racist or fascist or just plain bad when, at the same time, we don’t try to understand their arguments or portray them in anything approaching a rational light. Calling Scalia racist and calling it a day doesn’t cut it, and not only because it’s not true. He is a serious legal scholar who was attempting, in the quote you reproduce, to ask a serious question: do race based admissions policies hurt students who are ill prepared for the complexity of college courses. Stating that these students are disproportionally African American or Hispanic isn’t racist, it is what the data shows and it is the very reason for race based admissions policies in the first place.
Oral arguments before the Supreme Court are very free flowing discussions where the Justices respond to and interrupt the attorneys presenting their respective sides. Here is the entire oral argument: http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/14-981_p8k0.pdf
Here is the portion right before Scalia said what you’ve quoted above:
It is here where Scalia interrupts Mr. Garre and asks the question/makes the point above. Scalia also refers to an unspecified amicus curiae brief (all of them are here:http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/fisher-v-university-of-texas-at-austin-2/).
The point he is making is not racist. In fact he is trying to ask whether the race-based admission policy at UT actually hurts the audience it is trying to help.
There is some data to suggest that what Scalia asks about exists:
http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=3297&utm_source=Clarion+Call+12%2F9%2F15&utm_campaign=Clarion+Call&utm_medium=email
Also remember that the reason the Supreme Court upheld race based admissions policies was because, as Justice Kennedy wrote in the first Fisher opinion:
Kennedy goes on to write the following with regards to that ‘strict scrutiny’:
This is likely the reason for Scalia’s line of questioning – the Supreme Court is required to verify the necessity of race-based admissions policies. If policies are not necessary, indeed if they are detrimental, then they will not stand up to strict scrutiny.
Now, before people start to pile on me for disagreeing with you, I’m not saying that I agree with Scalia’s question or his line of reasoning. My sole point is that dismissing ideological opponents – especially serious ones like Scalia – as racist without considering their ideas is lazy and wrong. It prevents a larger debate on serious issues because you’ve signalled that no debate is needed, he’s a racist, end of story.
@17 Assume? He quoted his fucking words you racist twit.
Of course Penny will take the bigoted side.
So far we’ve seen it with black people, rape and Muslims. Have I missed any?
Penny:
Scalia:
That’s openly and blatantly racist. Just like you.
In the meantime, Christian universities are filing Title IX exemptions, allowing them to legally discriminate against anyone they think doesn’t meet their definition of Christian.
Penny L, a working definition of a racist is anybody not working to remove institutional racism from society, and the only way this is done to ignore the meritocracy bullshit of the post-racist bullshit (it is bullshit, since we aren’t post-racist) until the results are equal for women, POC, LGBT, etc. Which isn’t the case. Help is needed to get equal results.
Yes, because a racist would never use the pretense of caring about black people as an excuse to endorse policies that keep them down. It would certainly be the first time that had ever happened.
</sarcasm> in case that wasn’t clear.
I’d post the stats on how affirmative action doesn’t select unqualified candidates but Penny L has demonstrated on every occasion that they will consider no evidence.
Ban them while you’re ahead.
Penny, my sole point in replying to you is that dismissing an accusation of racism without considering the accused’s ideas is lazy and wrong.
sugarfrosted
You#re missing the obvious explenation: He’s a vampire.
+++
Didn’t Penny L say she didn’t comment here anymore?
Scalia was attempting to describe the mismatch theory, but he chose his words so poorly that he sounded extremely racist. Possibly because he is extremely racist. I’d have to refresh my memory on his record before I’d be personally comfortable drawing that conclusion. Hanlon’s Razor and whatnot.
The “mismatch theory” raises a potentially meaningful question: IF people are admitted whose grades, SATs, etc., otherwise wouldn’t make the cut; then are they more likely than others not to complete their studies? And is the net result that more or fewer of the affected people end up completing their studies?
The question may already have been answered, in which case it has no business coming up in this discussion at all. From my quick reading, it looks like it’s only partially answered. IIUC, eliminating preferential admissions for PoC across the board would decrease completion rates (one study estimates by 13%). I suspect this is plausible in part because the “IF” above is false: some “affirmative action” admissions may go to people who don’t make the academic cut–but I haven’t seen accurate information about how many. It’s likely that without affirmative action there will be fewer admissions of PoC who do make the cut academically, because in competitive schools the acceptance rate is low. At U of T at Austin, the acceptance rate is 40%. This means there are more than enough middle class, white applicants to completely fill the roster, and there are almost enough who are male. Any conscious or unconscious bias on the part of the admissions staff could severely skew the admission rates of women, people of color, or other disfavored groups. Getting a student body that reflects the population probably does require some level of affirmative effort to that end, and it doesn’t necessarily require admitting anyone who doesn’t make the cut academically.
That universities set aside some slots for people with “potential” is just a confounding factor. There were 5 PoC admitted to U of T that year (IIRC) with worse grades than her, but there were about 42 white people (IIRC) admitted with worse grades than her. It’s weird (no, actually it makes perfect sense) that her lawsuit singles out the black people so admitted. There were also 168 black and latino students who did better than her, academically, but were not admitted.
I can’t find any number indicating the number of black and latino students admitted, certainly not broken down by their average SAT score or other academic measures. But in 2014: black people were seriously under-represented (4% vs 12% in Texas generally); hispanic people were somewhat under-represented (22% vs 38% of the population); whites are slightly over-represented (46% vs 45% of the population); and Asian students were massively over-represented (19% vs 1% of the population).
This kind of stuff deserves study. And once the study is done, more study is required, to discern causal factors. (I didn’t even mention ways in which institutional racism could increase the washout rate of minorities, etc., and y’all don’t really need me to). If Scalia were honestly interested in knowing whether there’s anything to the “mismatch” theory, I could view that charitably, but the fact remains that he expressed himself in a way that sounds horribly racist, and he appears way less informed than he should be if this is a serious concern of his (don’t those people have clerks?).
Well, of course the obvious non-racist solution to minority students having problems at elite universities would be to analyze where they come from (bad high schools, financial constraints, racial discrimination in University) and then take meassures to help them get along.
This idea, of course, rest on the assumption that minority students are in general as capable as white students and therefore don’t need a “special” school for the slooooooow stuuuuuuuudents.
Giliell @ 25:
Unfortunately, no. That statement was about the Deja vu thread, where Penny not only refused to consider anything, and refused to answer anything.
@17 Your reference to a commentary piece at the John William Pope Center actually makes your posting less believable. The John William Pope Center is a conservative think tank working to remake education in the US as follows:
These are hardly the guiding words of a group interested in equality and justice, but do agree with maintaining current status of unequal treatment and conditions. What is even worse is that the commentary you reference blatantly cherry picks the data available. At best it provides a patina of legitimacy to your comment, but only if no one actually reads the commentary.
In short, your comments are indistinguishable from what a racist apologist would write.
Penny lost me right there.
Serious Legal Scholar Scalia: Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
Serious Legal Scholar Scalia: If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder?
Serious Legal Scholar Scalia: In the first 100 years of the Republic, the States enacted numerous laws restricting the immigration of certain classes of aliens, including convicted criminals, indigents, persons with contagious diseases, and (in Southern States) freed blacks. Neuman, The Lost Century of American Immigration (1776–1875), 93 Colum. L. Rev. 1833, 1835, 1841–1880 (1993). State laws not only provided for the removal of unwanted immigrants but also imposed penalties on unlawfully present aliens and those who aided their immigration.
Serious Legal Scholar Scalia: Obviously the Amendment does not apply to arms that cannot be hand-carried — it’s to keep and “bear,” so it doesn’t apply to cannons — but I suppose here are hand-held rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes, that will have to be decided.
In every
block of marblePenny L comment we see astatuekernel of truth as plain as though it stood before us, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. We have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to other eyes as ours see it.–
MichelangeloWe are PlethoraSenate minority leader Reid condemns Scalia’s racist rhetoric.
I’ve heard the same rhetoric since the 1950’s, always from racists pretending to be pragmatists. Those are racist statements, period. And they should always be called out as such, no matter who makes them.
This reaction just goes to show how incredibly stupid the American left really is these days. Really Myers, did you even bother to check the context of that statement? It is perfectly reasonable to argue that those who make it into top-rated universities based on their race rather than academic merits will have a harder time, may end up getting frustrated and ultimately may fail to graduate, than those who make it into these universities based on their merits alone.
You are arguing that they get in because of their race, rather than their ability. The efforts to improve campus diversity are not about making excuses for the inability of minority students to do the work, but to directly offset the ingrained biases that you, Mikko Sandt, have just ably demonstrated.
Mikko Sandt @33,
Nobody makes it to university “on their merits alone.” The typical white student makes it based partly on merits but largely on privilege. Privilege that is unavailable or denied to students of color.
“You are arguing that they get in because of their race, rather than their ability.”
Once again, this is in the context of affirmative action. A black individual who makes it into a top-rated university due to his merits has nothing to do with this debate. Scalia was specifically referring to those minority students whose admission was partially based on their ethnic background but who were lacking the test scores. It should be assumed that such individuals have a lower graduation rate than those who were admitted purely based on their test scores. This “ingrained bias” is simply common sense.
You know, today the American Astronomical Society’s president posted a letter calling for graduate programs to re-evaluate how they use standardized tests (specifically the GRE). Because someone had looked at the evidence and discovered GRE scores were terrible at predicting, say, the folks who got prestigious postdocs after grad school. And that women and underrepresented minorities did worse on them than men, (and that even the tests cost a lot, let alone any test prep you do) so you couldn’t even say they were harmless.
I mention this, because Scalia doesn’t seem to have anything backing his statements up beyond his gut feeling that whatever it is, it can’t be bias, so it must be black students being unprepared (which has nothing to do with bias, of course). Does he even bother to cite evidence of his claim?
(IIRC, there is evidence that first-generation university students are less prepared than their peers. On the other hand, the evidence suggests this can be addressed as a cultural problem (aka it’s not so much being unable to do the work, but an extreme case of ‘college is different than high school, so you need to explain things to freshmen’).)
Scalia makes the same argument/excuse I hear every day regarding why there aren’t more Black or Latino PoC in the Valley. When I point out the significant representation of other PoC – typically Asian/South Asian – in complex coding and tech jobs, the argument is shown to be obvious nonsense, and I become “that f-ing SJW” or “another goddamn liberal who wants to dumb down everything” or worse.
I’m still trying, fruitlessly, to figure out a way to cut through the libertarian meritocracy meme. It’s so deeply embedded….
The “equal playing field” bootstrap nonsense is in full effect, apparently. After all, if we can pretend that whites and black people both got a completely fair shot, we can completely ignore any observable biases in the system.
If me and an identical clone of me ran a footrace where I’m carrying a 40 lb bag and they’re unburdened, they’ll probably win. My poor performance has no bearing on my ability as a runner, because I have a burden that diverts my resources from the task at hand. I could be just as good as my clone, or even better, but you’d never know that if you only looked at the start-point and the results.
*Sigh* That again.
– A. Einstein
(A man who knew a thing or two.)
Penny L is right that Scalia was referring to the “mismatch hypothesis,” the claim that affirmative action doesn’t benefits the people who get admitted because of it. That’s still a bad argument, but it can kind of annoying for people who’ve followed the legal battle to see people react as they are. Case in point. As that blog post says, the “mismatch hypothesis is pretty discredited by another amicus brief.
The question that Scalia asks could also be put another way as “Does it benefit students to place them in programs that may be beyond ability.” Which is actually a valid and interesting question. Colleges consider many factors aside from just academic performance when admitting students, including legacy status, extra-curricular activities and race.
The problem isn’t really the question, the problem is that Scalia starts with the TOTALLY RACIST assumption that black people are not as smart as white people and from their goes on to ask the question.
“there” not “their” Dang! I hate when I do that.
Mikko Sandt? What a coincidence, I used to dowload Duke Nukem 3D maps off your site years ago. Sad to know you think this way (and that you’re also a fan of Ayn Rand, ugh).
#notalldukenukemfans
Just some random observations
1. One question I’d like to see explored further is whether universities are using affirmative action as an excuse to do nothing else for disadvantaged students. All kids from disadvantages backgrounds (not just minorities) have overcome huge obstacles to get into those schools. Unfortunately, many of them come from crappy schools and are unprepared for college. Are colleges doing enough to help them? Sometimes I feel colleges like to point to affirmative action as proof of how much they are doing and then throw these students in the deep end and wash their hands off them. As far as I am concerned, affirmative action is just the beginning.
2. The other concern I have with affirmative action is that it may not be going to the students that really need it. One could argue that someone like, say, Ben Carson definitely deserved to benefit from affirmative action (whether he actually did or not is a matter of some debate). However, Carson’s kids don’t deserve to benefit from affirmative action – even though they are African American. It would be useful to know how much such kids from wealthy backgrounds benefit and how much help is diverted away from the truly needy.
– RM
RGMani @#45
I am interested with your point 2. I think you might be wrong here. The fact that Ben Carson’s children are from a wealthy and educated family does not do anything to change the history of racism that disadvantaged many minorities for centuries. The whole point of affirmative action is to correct historical wrongs that impacted the lives of minorities who were systematically and legally disadvantaged. So I don’t think you’re right about #2.
Also, it is worth noting that the value of diversity on campus is worth more to society as a whole than to the individual. Having a diverse cross section of society on our campuses leads to broader ideas, broader opinions, challenges to the status quo and exposure to opinions and ideas that the students may not have experienced otherwise. The fact that it also helps people from historically disadvantaged groups to live better lives is just one benefit.
@ Penny L
The necessity of race-based policies has to do with institutional racism, something that you, Scalia and the person Richard Sander that you link to seem to have no clue about. There is tons of evidence of systematic institutional racism at many levels of society so there is good reason to at least spare it a thought if one is not a racist and thinks of their fellow humans as people that they should assume are just as good as themselves as a group.
None of you give any sign of actually considering the effects of racial bias in any of the mismatch conditions that are mentioned, or in the case broadly and your author seems to conveniently neglect information that would be required to demonstrate anything. That indicates that you and them are motivated to emphasize inferiority of black people and other minorities as a priority when it should be natural to look at racial bias as an explanation because it is a logical explanation to be investigated if nothing else. If you were a person who make positive assumptions about your fellow citizens and humans you would not been to be told these things.
I wonder why that is? I wonder why you would selectively, as in prejudging based on race, leave out a reasonable and logical explanation for different outcomes of racial minorities given the overwhelming evidence for racism and racial bias that exists in our country.
1) “The material might be too hard for minorities!” Richard whines. Yet beyond simply saying that blacks are only passing par exams 1/3 of the time they do no work to investigate why. The simple fact is enough for them to declare “mismatch!”
A non-racist would assume better of their fellow humans beings and actually look for racial bias in law school in a country that already has shitloads of racism in many many other areas. There is a fucking duty to actually look and report what might be there if nothing else.
Some googling reveals that there are claims that bar exams are racist, and there should have been an effort to look to see if there is anything looking at structural racism in law schools. No I’m not going to go to the trouble of demonstrating it because people making the assumption that minorities are inferior in some way have a fucking obligation to give evidence of it. All I need are the claims to show that they should have been mentioned.
2) “They can’t be as competitive as all those AP course taking white people!” Richard whines. But I see no effort whatsoever to look into the reality of black law students and AP classes, or any reasons for why they might not be as competitive.
A non-racist would assume better of their fellow humans beings and actually look for racial bias in student competition in a country that already has shitloads of racism in many many other areas. Again, not my job to look because if someone was not a racist they would have already looked and described what is or is not there.
3) “They are hanging out with other blacks and they all are worse students!” Richard whines. It’s not like racial groups will group with themselves out of a sense of a need for social defense with peers when society is racist. I mean racist white people would never keep to themselves based on race right? Or systematically move out of places where racial minorities live? So it’s totally not a human instinct that woks both ways.
Some simple googling reveals many instances of racism in the social environment of law schools over the last several years alone. Harvard, UCLA, more…
A non-racist would assume better of their fellow humans beings and actually look for racial bias in law school social culture that would encourage minorities to collect defensively in a country that already has shitloads of racism in many many other areas. Richard is a racist, I’ll be charitable and assume it’s unconscious but it looks pretty clear to me.
So are you Penny L.
@ Mikko Sandt
Fuck the context of the statement. See my comment to Penny L for reasons why they should not even be asking these questions at this stage. A black person making it into a university of any kind will be facing a very different experience than their white counterparts. An experience that deserves to be mentioned up front if one is not a racist person. To go straight to an assumption about test scores without investigating how institutional racism might relate to tests indicates someone clearly prejudiced based on race.
one of the things I sometimes dislike about SCOTUS is the narrowness of the decisions or question. I understand the reluctance on the court’s side but it just seems to push the issues of justice a little bit at a time
In this case it is admissions with regards to race. I wonder how Scalia’s “question” would sound if it was applied to legacy admissions .
there is a problem and some are trying to pretend there is not.
uncle frogy
“Mikko Sandt? What a coincidence, I used to dowload Duke Nukem 3D maps off your site years ago. Sad to know you think this way”
Hah, I’d have hoped that us Duke3D fans were impervious to this PC/SJW/liberal puritan crap that has infected the left like all sorts of nonsensical “culture war” issues have infected the right.
Ghe man what is “the left” anyway Mikko? what are the issues that constitute the “the left”?
uncle frogy
Mikko Sandt, #49
It’s such an inconvenience for libertarians and entitled white dudes with fragile egos.
I love it.
PC= “I don’t like the fact that you are sensitive to something important to you and I’m too lazy/ignorant to articulate why.”
SJW= “I don’t like how you choose to engage in social justice advocacy/activism important to you and I’m too lazy/ignorant to articulate why.”
liberal= Too badly defined the way I see it typically textually gesticulated about. I think that only things like “socialism” end up worse.
There is a problem here, and it’s a huge one. But it isn’t the one that Scalia is talking about.
The problem is that ALL the students — black, white, privileged and unprivileged — are coming to college unprepared. Colleges are having to bend over backwards to get them up to the level that would have been assumed in any previous generation. Anybody who’s been teaching a while could have told Scalia this.
The main problem is attention — they seem to be incapable of listening. In some of my smaller classes, I’ve taken to using my class time going individually from student to student and explaining things to them, because if I say something from the front of the room, I might as well be on the moon.
Anyway, the biggest factor for how likely students are to succeed is how seriously they take their studies, and that’s utterly race-independent.
(I’m just ranting a bit because I’m sitting here typing while I’m waiting for students to redo their citations in Basic Comp, which I have explained literally over a dozen times over the course of the semester.)
“PC= “I don’t like the fact that you are sensitive to something important to you and I’m too lazy/ignorant to articulate why.””
It’s not about mere sensitivity but the inability to have any sort of a discussion in the first place, when a simple disagreement in itself may constitute a microaggression, a trigger or whatever. Oh, and often your very being in a discussion is delegitimized because you’re white or “speaking from a position of privilege” or other nonsense. This Scalia thing is a case in point. Rather than debating the merits of his point, Myers reduced it into “RACISM!” because that’s the only politically correct way to “debate” the issue.
Scalia, himself, was a beneficiary of “affirmative action” (in the ethnic sense).
Reagan wanted an Italian for the SCOTUS. Hearing that one of the candidates, Scalia, was Italian, Raygun immediately brought him in for an interview and within 15 minutes, appointed Scaldy to the position.
Clearly, Scalia’s ability with the common tongue is lacking, perhaps he could get away with it on a lower court.
Maybe he should consider his CV a little.
Mikko Sandt @#49
I blame having to interact closely with people of darker skin colors on a daily basis and thus noticing the heavy discrimination they face firsthand. Also, empathy. I can’t deny I’m also a bit of an oddity though – I must be one of the few feminism-friendly people who bought Duke Nukem Forever full price and -gasp!- even enjoyed it for the most part. Hypocrisy? I guess you could say that; it’s at least some sort of heavily compartmentalized thinking for sure.
brucegee1962 @#53
This rings true to me, and I notice that the same thing happens in many other countries as well.
I’ve never understood the Supreme Court. They’re supposed to be lawyers, right? While in fact they are politicians. Except that there is no democratic control of them, as there is of other politicians.
Over on the Volokh Conspiracy, Sander is defending his claim and links to an article summarizing the current research.
@ Mikko Sandt
I hear that claim all the time, just in the last week on Facebook in fact as a couple of people tried to claim that pointing out racism or sexism in a discussion “shuts communication down”. I have yet to actually see anyone explain how this occurs functionally and observed that the definition of “SJW” refers to their own behavior and is typical authoritarian projection.
These particular people simply refused to engage with the fact that those are terms that describe beliefs, thoughts, behavior and communications and actually unpacked into things that can be described. With a couple of other observations I suspect that they simply shut down themselves as they perceived an insulting characterization as just an insult and refused to understand what others were trying to explain to them.
So perhaps you can be the first to demonstrate that it’s not your own sensitivity and weakness of character? After all your “whatever” is itself evidence that you don’t take the ideas seriously so I’m fine with my suspicions.
In my experience the people triggered are the ones using SJW, people who can’t deal with concepts like bigotry, xenophobia, and irrational prejudice and discrimination applied to themselves or trusted authorities independent of any arguments. Or when the argument has to do with the ineffectiveness of things that are themselves prejudiced or discriminatory.
In my experience it’s quite ironic that people that can’t deal with the concept of a “microaggression” likely feel similar things themselves when insulting characterizations are rationally and logically applied to them. I find the idea of a maintenance social dominance behavior based on race, sex or similar characteristic to be pretty consistent with how animal and human psychology works. Especially since it takes some dominance behaviors of my own to deal with such people who lace introspective abilities.
I’m white, male and so far over on the masculine side of things that you can find people like me in research journals and I have no problems with the concept of white privilege and have had constructive discussions with people here. Emotionally intense ones with insults even. I doubt you are being delegitimized because of your race. I suspect it’s because of your character and lack of comprehension and that is the best you can do with motivated reasoning and group-think.
I see more than the word “racism” in PZ’s post. Argument rejected until I see your reasoning and logic.
That would be “…lack introspective abilities.” in third to last paragraph.
@Mikko, #54
However, since these comments constitute a discussion, it becomes clear that the bigger problem is the inability of too many to even recognize facts and arguments at all.
Maybe you were simply educated at a school that was way too fucking tough for you, but try to grasp the point that if you want to criticize people for not having discussions, you might want to target that criticism at people who are not actually and obviously in the middle of having a discussion.
To do otherwise would be to seriously risk your reputation for being minimally aware of what is going on around you.
Oooops. Too late.
I find the “shuts down discussion” claim hilarious when those making it are literally freaking out over somebody actually discussing why certain words, terms, phrases, claims are racist etc…
@38 hackerguitar said:
The best argument I’ve come across is this: “Public schooling is they only educational model in harmony with the idea of a meritocracy; I’m glad to see you support it! I’m also glad to see you’re against the idea of inheriting or gifting money, and won’t either accept or will such things.”
If pressed for details:
A meritocracy would be best served by the following: a ban on all private academic institutions, no financial gifts over some small amount, and a 100% inheritance tax to fund public schooling.
1) Tax-free gifting and inheritance both tilt the playing field in favour of the recipients since dynastic wealth transfer of any kind perpetuates money in families regardless of achievement, which goes against the idea of a meritocracy.
2) Private schools (while there is little evidence they actually do give you a better education) cannot be equally accessed by naute of being “private”; they may also work to reinforce in-group social bonding between attendees, biasing the assessments of any member of another member in the future, which violates both the meritocracy AND the equality of opportunity requirements.
3) The funding of public schooling must be done through taxes, and what better way to ensure equality of opportunity than by getting the money from those who can no longer use it?
@Brony
YOU can’t be pissed off about “microaggressions”. The whole concept is nonsense. If someone is stereotyping you, they’re making statements that are not actually true.
HOWEVER, I am righteously pissed about people reasonably and accurately describing my bad behaviors! I mean, it’s **obviously** going to hurt much more if it’s true.
THEREFORE: I am not worried about continuing to spout bullshit, BUT you should instantly shut up with your evidence-based criticisms.
QEF’nD
White drop-out is clearly a serious problem. First white kids get in because the qualified non-whites are rejected, then they can’t hack it. We’d better have a program to deal with this immediately.
@54 Mikko Sandt said:
So to rephrase, you don’t like having to think about how your words may come across to many people before speaking, what they may imply about your views of the world, or that what may be clear in your head is not clear once you write it out? Because that’s what is sounds like you’re saying. Let me turn to Neil Gaiman about the phrase “PC”:
Treating everyone respectfully from the get-go doesn’t seem to have a downside to me (other than doing so can get draining in certain situations). So why not make it a policy? Have you ever been mad at someone for being too respectful of you?
Being privileged doesn’t make one wrong about something, but it often does mean one can have a difficult time understanding an alternate viewpoint or a completely legitimate criticism. This is not a controversial idea, but the word “privilege” has become so loaded amongst some groups that members often stop thinking when they hear it. I found this post helpful when I started actively thinking about what privileges I have; if you haven’t already, maybe give it a read and a ponder.
The Parable of the Dog and the Lizard
@Giliell, Crip Dyke
The icing on the cake was when the two that kept throwing themselves at me with SJW and associated rhetoric shut up when I pointed out they were being triggered by the application of racism and sexism ans were effectively asking for a safe zone. Now I have someone that might be willing to be more reasonable, but I’ve yet to see anything of substance in a reply so far.
Is it ethical to find a way to enjoy white privilege? Because when I started seeing the social dominance software that my race, and myself, were using for so long ways of countering them that were both effective and fun started becoming apparent. It’s a bit like using their own “social momentum” against them.
Sugarfrosted —
I’m younger than Scalia…uh, somewhat, too lazy to go look (and I do fully admit to lifelong reading of dictionaries and phrase books for pleasure, and I also fully credit that to why non-concrete language and I are such good friends in spite of my leanings to literalness) but I picked up those slang terms (and more) as a child from my regular (albeit maybe strange) reading and watching old movies.
‘too fewer’, can’t the man even write in English?
roachiesmom #68
Maybe Sugarfrosted knows something about Scalia’s childhood that I don’t, but I assumed Scalia had parents and grandparents and possibly even talked with them. (I know… shocking, isn’t it?)
Scalia is almost as old as my father, but “applesauce” is not unfamiliar to me. Let’s see what other anachronistic slangy expressions I have picked up over my life:
23 skiddoo!
There may be snow on the roof, but there’s fire in the furnace.
You’re a brick!
Shoo fly pie and apple pan dowdy.
Going like Barney Oldfield!
Slower than molasses in January.
All wool and a yard wide.
– that’s just off the top of my head, I’m sure there are hundreds more.
I do find this interesting that this always comes up when talking about affirmative action and not legacy admissions. I’m not entirely sure how an admission biased in your favor because one or more of your parents went to the school is not a problem, but a small bias in your favor because you’re a member of a historically socially and economically disadvantaged group is the worst thing ever.
Want to make the schools admit based on merit? Then buying your way into the schools by way of legacy admissions should be the absolute first thing to go.
Affirmative action != to taking a lesser qualified black person instead of an amazingly overqualified white person.
Affirmative action == given two equally mediocre people they’ll take the black person over the white person, instead of defaulting to the white person that would get it without such laws.
The meritocracy these people want is still intact, they just don’t get points on the scorecard for being a member of the class with the most privileged skin tone.
Sugarfrosted:
Another one weighing in on applesauce. Scalia is 79 years old, so I’m pretty sure applesauce was still in everyday usage when he was a child, just another word to denote nonsense or bullshit, like twaddle, poppycock, balderdash, hogwash, piffle, and eyewash. Those are just some I remember along with applesauce. I’m 58 and heard applesauce used frequently. A lot of that had to do with heavy cultural disapproval of swearing, which my elders grew up with, along with being Catholic. Swearing is a serious ohnodon’tdothatever thing in Catholicism. (One of my great-grandmothers would scold me something fierce for saying “geez”.) That’s why I heard sugar as a stand in for shit quite often.
There are a whole lot of reasons to scathe Scalia, but this isn’t one of them.
So, for those that think a claim of racism shuts down any discussion… what’s going on right here?
Either the people making that claim aren’t here to discuss things, or no-one is discussing things with them. Which is it?
From past experience, they aren’t here to discuss, in the sense of listening and possibly learning. They are here to defend their privileges with smoke, mirrors, and handwaving, and don’t like having to look at and possibly change their minds about their privileges. They hate being called a racist during the process, since it goes against their presuppositions.
“Applesauce” may not be my cup of tea (although “cup of tea” apparently is). It’s for too folksy and full of false humility. But I really like “jiggery pokery”. It’s crusty impatient curmudgeonly inability to suffer fools that really appeals to me. I’d, personally, use it to describe the contortions and convolution marriage inequlifiers go through to somehow try to convince themselves that selective marriage privilege in some way doesn’t discriminate and that beliefs in such are a traditional entitlement.
those who make it into these universities based on their merits alone
Because their environment (whether their parents were wealthy, or had opportunity) had nothing to do with their “merits.”
NPR did a really good series about education segregation on the Planet Money podcast.[1] Basically, the surprise discovery is that schools are still segregated. And that taxation by district is being used to make sure that wealthy people’s kids have nice schools and, uh…. who cares what else. And, of course, since you’re poor and live in a district with a “low tax base” you have no chance of getting a higher education unless you are incredibly motivated, or brilliant, and it doesn’t hurt to be both.
The show was really upsetting to me; it made it obvious that there is a huge problem at the elementary and high school level and that racist parents are preparing the next generation of racists.
[1]http://www.npr.org/2014/05/16/313063913/does-it-matter-if-schools-are-racially-integrated
The meritocracy these people want is still intact
The meritocracy those people want never fucking existed.
.. and they would completely lose their shit if it did.
It’s like libertarian economic policy: there’s what they claim to support, and what the system they support actually does, and the two really have little in common.
I know one of Scalia’s approximately eight thousand kids. (He’s on the younger side, in his thirties.)
He comes off as a decent guy and I don’t know anything about his politics. He does tend to date what I think are weirdly younger women, but hey, that’s not really my business, if everyone’s consenting. He also absolutely loses his shit if you talk about what a scumbag his father is in front of him.
Fair enough, I guess. It’s got to be hard to live your life with a father who’s a widely reviled public figure.
lol
that’s fucking classic.
bullshit. I used to teach at a private suburban university where diversity was injected via a Special Opportunity Program in which admission requirements were waived for students from certain “urban” [wink] high schools. The program included all kinds of counseling and remedial how-to-student stuff but the vast majority of those poor kids just got their asses kicked; no fault of their own. They hadn’t been given the tools. It’s one of the things that finally drove me from the profession. I was heartsick every semester about who failed. Who benefits from that situation?
Well shit.
I’m drunk, too.
But I’m not stupid.
MArcus Ranum
No shit.
There’s two things in abundance in our home: love and education. There’s a third thing we aren’t lacking, and that is money. We’re not rich, bit the combination of these things means we can give the kids tons of extra curricular input. We can show them different countries, go to the zoo, museums, theatre, expositions…
They are encouraged to ask questions. They ask us to find information for them (can you google what kind of skin dolphins have, please? What’s the Caucasus? Can you show me the Caucasus on a map, please?) We own and buy and read books. As a result, they have a huge advantage over their peers and since most people cannot tell education from intelligence anyway, they are universally believed to be very smart.
ChasCPeterson #82
What were the admission requirements?
I’m asking because I live not far from a university that has widely different requirements for different courses. The requirements for studying medicine are so high that only 1% of all students qualify, and the percentage accepted is even less. The requirements for studying mathematics are so low that anyone who passed their high school exams and got a below average score on the local version of the SAT would qualify.
If the requirements were waived for the med students the auditoriums would literally burst at the seams. If they were waiver for math students then… actually, I don’t know what would happen because I’ve never met or heard of anyone ever being rejected from there. Plenty of people fail the later exams of the course, but anyone who want to apply get through.
Finally, unless you have some sort of evidence that what you’re describing is widespread or applies to this legal case, I don’t think your personal story is extremely relevant. You have been simply teaching at a badly mismanaged establishment.
There are several peer reviewed studies linked to in their analysis. Agree that the site is not unbiased, but then again neither are we.
No serious person appears to be making this assumption, and certainly Scalia isn’t. If anything, the University of Texas through their race based admissions policies are tacitly making that assumption. The court isn’t being asked to overturn Grutter in this case, and I don’t think anyone expects that they will, so race based admissions policies will likely survive but in a much more narrow and transparent form than currently exists at the University of Texas, where the process is very opaque. The broader issue is explained by Chief Justice Roberts’ famous line, “the way to stop discrimination based on race is to stop discriminating based on race.” This is the argument we have to overcome in order to justify admissions policies (or other policies) which attempt to correct perceived racism.
Affirmative action isn’t going to stand up to judicial strutiny forever. The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all men are created equal, but it didn’t really mean it (didn’t mean women, either). Likewise the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment (enacted in 1868) didn’t really mean it. But over time the full scope of those words has become apparent. Today, as a legal principle (!), we treat all citizens equally and they are entitled to equal protection under the law.
Except in college admissions, we generally don’t. We treat Asians differently (it is harder for them to get into elite universities) and we treat blacks and Hispanics differently (it is easier for them). There are good reasons for this that have been outlined here, but ultimately if we believe in the 14th Amendment and believe in the idea that all people are equal, then race-based college admissions plans have a shelf life. As they should.
It occured functionally on this issue. PZ didn’t correctly characterize Scalia’s remarks, explore in what context he made those remarks, or what the follow up to his remarks were. He made two claims, the first being that this case is before the Supreme Court because “Antonin Scalia is a fucking racist.” That’s patently ridiculous, four justices are required for a writ of certiorari to be granted. The second, based on the first, is that Scalia “wants to argue that maybe black students are just a little slower and less intelligent than the white students.” As I’ve noted, that isn’t Scalia’s question/argument at all. Ad hominem attacks or assertions always deflect attention from the real issues or points that the other side is making, and that’s what PZ did here. The topic of this post is not about “mismatch”, the issue Scalia raised during oral arguments, the topic is Scalia’s fucking racism, and would likely have remained so had I not commented.
the problem with you penny lane and Justice Scalia is you think you are oh so much better than everyone else because you think you are that much “smarter” than everyone else.
you nor he could not ever be mistaken
uncle frogy
Penny:
It’s only patently ridiculous if at least four other justices endorsed such a writ; if that is not the case, then it’s factual and therefore not ridiculous.
(Which is it?)
It’s actually based on what was quoted: “There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less advanced school, a less a slower track school where they do well.”
Nope. An argumentum ad hominem is claiming someone’s contention is wrong on the basis of who they are, rather than on their actual claim, and what PZ wrote indicates he believes Scalia is racist on the basis of his (weak, hearsay) claim.
You imagine you’ve changed the topic?
(Heh)
Scalia is not a racist? And i suposse he is not a homophobe either…there must be some context, some intent or something…
@74 Anri
There’s two things there. On one hand, they don’t want anyone to use those words, because if they aren’t used, they can pretend the shit they are saying or supporting, is not racist. By making those dirty words that mustn’t be uttered, they are protecting themselves from being identified for what they are. On the other hand, it’s a convenient way to shut down the conversation themselves and blame it on the others.
To both of those things i say: Fuck that.
If this is the reaction people like Mikko have when people of color, women, and LGBT people demand that they be treated equally and have the same status in American society as white men, I can only imagine how explosively they’ll lose their shits if they had a centuries long history of persecution, physical violence, discrimination, and daily microaggressions to deal with themselves.
Yep, white people declaring racism to be over will magically erase a few centuries of discrimination.
You could also use the French model: Even statistics about ethnic origin are illegal, therefore no racial discrimination can be happening ‘Cause they’re all just equal citizens, right?
Penny L @ 86:
In reading over your post, I was wondering if you could clarify a couple of points for me:
1) I’m not aware that anyone is arguing that taking race into account in college admissions is something that should be continued in a post-racist world. As far as I can tell, the people here are arguing that the world is still pretty racist. You appear to be arguing it isn’t sufficiently racist to continue affecting college admissions policy. May I ask when you believe this changed? Not necessarily a specific year, just the general timeframe for racism becoming a minor force in US life. (I’m assuming you would agree that past life in the US has been seriously affected by racism – if you don’t think that’s the case, please let me know and I’ll correct my assumptions about you.)
2) Regarding a claim of racism effectively shutting down discussion – if a blogger were to start a thread with an accusation of racism, it would – presumably – then be impossible for there to be a 90+ comment thread of discussion based on it, yes?
Do you agree or disagree?
@92 Anri
Oh, but you see, this can’t be a discussion because people are not agreeing with Penny and are using words they don’t like, therefore it must be devoid of any content other than hateful bashing of people just calmly trying to express their totally non-racist, rational ideas about how blacks are just a bit less than whites and giving them the same opportunities hurts them because they just can’t function at that level.
Larry Wilmore, host of The Nightly Show, made some caustic and funny remarks about Abigail Fisher’s case. Link
No fuckwitted idjit. Until there is the following, race needs to be factor in adminssions/job/etc.
Black K-12 school funding equals white K-12 funding.
High school graduation rates white/black equal
College entrance exam scores white/black equal
Acceptance rates without the need for race equal
Graduate school white/black levels equal
PhD degrees white/black equal
Job opportunities equal
Job pay equal
Evidence must be presented for every step, otherwise there is no true equality.
Until all is equal, institutional racism is the status quo. Anybody supporting institutional racism is a racist.
The NFL had to adopt the Rooney Rule, where for every white head coach candidate interviewed, a black/(now other minority) candidate must also be interviewed. Note that there is no requirement to hire. But it doubled the number of black head coaches in the NFL, which is still less than the player/low level coach ratios.
Prima facie evidence that incomes aren’t equal, so society is still racist.
We are a racist society as a null hypothesis, which is supported by the evidence. You must evidence, not just claim evidence, for your claims. DO SO.
Penny, I’d be interested to see what parts of the peer reviewed research corroborate Scalia’s understanding of how every black person from a lesser school feels and operates:
Since we’ve established that this is in no way a sweeping racist generalization, and you’ve no doubt already delved into the hard research to check all the facts, perhaps you could help shed some light on why it is that blacks from lesser schools might be functionally unable to adapt to circumstances like other humans.
@Penny L 86
The studies are meaningless because the author, and you, have prejudged the people the affirmative action program is meant for based on race (that would be racism). Just because they show a pattern that looks like “mismatch” does not mean that it is mismatch. As I said in my previous comment, given the large amount of structural institutionalized racism that this country has the assumption of mismatch is a biased assumption. A bias based on race. A person that does not check for racism first is acting racist. If they continue to do so the label of racist applies as more than a description of characteristics.
And spare us the general comments about bias, if everyone is truly biased you should automatically be pointing at the bias and demonstrating it like I am.
Your reading comprehension leaves much to be desired. Most of the rest of your comment can wait until you actually respond to what I wrote.
If there is more than one potential reason for why a race-based differential outcome exists between black and white people, and a person decides to emphasize only one of them that demonstrates a racial bias. Since you, Richard Sander, and Scalia went right for the argument that blacks are inferior as a group, the fact that you have literally nothing to say about structural institutionalized racism shows you have a racial bias. Specifically prejudice against black people.
There is more than one explanation and you chose one to look at. That matters.
The only way out of this is if you can show that you, Scalia, or Richard Sander did address it and gave it as serious a look as you did the argument that blacks are inferior.
No the broadest issue, the one that necessitated affirmative action to begin with is structural institutionalized racism. If you really believe that you would not be here. You would be in other parts of the internet criticizing white people racist against minorities since we are the ones that started the discrimination problem we are responding to. But you probably can’t do that since you are objectively acting prejudiced, and it’s mate discrimination often go together inside the same head.
This part first,
Harris and Scalia fans. I guess this is another bit of BS that is a general pattern. Explain how the context makes something racist no longer racist (racism explained previously and readdressed next)
Scalia was called a racist because he said something racist. Note the pattern I described above for a second time which you refused to engage with. He made a choice between multiple possibilities instead of looking at both or all of them. He chose the option that said blacks were inferior. He prejudged black people based on raceTHAT IS RACIST! CONTEXT DOES NOT CHANGE THAT!
Once again discussion is “shut down” because someone can’t deal with the functional use of descriptive terms because of personal bias and motivated reasoning.
Was trying to search for studies regarding the effectiveness of affirmative action and couldn’t find much.
This article seems to cover mismatch theory pretty well: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/opinion/sunday/does-affirmative-action-do-what-it-should.html
Also, there is a (1998?) paper by Barbara Reskin which seems to support the effectiveness of AA, but I find only citations and not the actual paper.
Can anyone point me to some resources?
Penny L, required reading before claiming that we are a post-racist society.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/08/19/good-morning-america/
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/11/17/later-this-morning-in-america/
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/02/17/reagans-morning-in-america-has-acquired-a-different-resonance/
And our present
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/10/31/discuss-racism-in-america-2/
I don’t know if you are just naive or deliberately ignorant, but you need to know and acknowledge what the evidence says.
It’s a sad world where racist nonsense is called debate, and pointing out the racist nonsense is called killing the debate.
@ Penny
“Most experts agree…”
Try not to open your paragraphs with obvious weasel words willya?
funniest thing I’ve read today.
“Who Do You Mean We Kemo Sabe”
progressive racism at it’s finest.
if you believe this… you’re not only a racist, you’re just plain fucking stupid.
there was a good reason the person Scalia was responding to cited proposition 209.
I bet you have ZERO clue why they did so, or what actually happened there.
zero.
the knee-jerk anti-affirmative action movements of the 80s were based on pure fucking ignorance. nothing more, nothing less.