• Aceticon@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    How about the likes of Harvard bitching and moaning about this, replaced “affirmative action” with measures to make it easier for students from poorer backgrounds to attend it, which would probably help way more people of latin and afro-american ancestry (who in the most tend to be poorer than average) than this system of “quotas for people who went to nice schools and can afford Harvard student fees” that mainly helps the scions of high-middle and richer parents whose only thing in common with the vast majority of people in the minorities supposedly being helped is a handful of genes?

    You can measure the dripping hypocrisy and sense of entitlement of the people defending certain (maybe most) “afirmative action” measures by just well-off compared to the vast majority of the population those “helped” by it are (a particularly obvious one is “quotas for CxO positions for women” - it’s not going to be women from poor backgrounds who work as cleaning-ladies that will benefit from such quotas, but rather a handful of women from much better off backgrounds than 99% of people)

    • nomadjoanne@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Not to mention that you may actually be hurting minorities by allowing them to go to schools they aren’t quite prepared for. A lot of people end up leaving science because of this. They may not quite be up for a Stanford or MIT, but they might be extremely well qualified for a university just one or two rungs lower.

      Instead they flunk out when, okay, maybe they wouldn’t have won a Nobel prize, but they could have actually had a very good career in STEM.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There is a huge problem out there with the inequality in access and quality of even primary Education, especially in the US.

        Make it so that inner city schools are as good as posh private schools and I guarantee you that there will be a ton of kids from poor minorities well prepared to atten the likes of Stanford and MIT.

        Affirmative Action has been used as a massive distraction from the huge discrimination along income lines in Education in the US whilst doing almost nothing to actually correct the worst discrimination, as it’s not the well-off kids who attended expensive private and are “prepared for MIT” and happen to be black or latino who need help.