I regard affirmative action as pernicious – a system that had wonderful ideals when it started but was almost immediately abused for the benefit of white middle-class women.
Camille Paglia
I regard affirmative action as pernicious
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Paglia isn’t wrong here, but she’s not quite right either. The system was abused by prosperous members of the various historically marginalized groups who were favored under affirmative action policies.
A common use of AA in government contracting is for connected “minority” types to set up a company solely to bid on SBD federal contracts and set-asides for work they are unable to perform they they then “subcontract” to a mainstream corporation, typically one of the beltway bandits.
Everybody knows it is a scam but in most cases there actually isn’t an honest SDB that could bid. Going along with the pretense saves time and wrangling with the politicians.
Just one of the many ways AA achieved nothing meaningful.
Other than make money for “facilitators” and shakedown artists.
I always though it would make good fodder for a murder mystery but some topics hit too close to home. Hollywood has them too, executive producers that don’t produce. Those come in all types.
Applicants with African or Caribbean parents may well have been the greatest beneficiaries of benefits designed for descendants of African slaves. I think they represented about half of Harvard’s black students.
I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that these are the black candidates who get in without the need for AA.
Or would have anyway, but get rolled in, to make the policy look more successful than it actually is. The debate over the AA outcomes is even more contentious than AA itself.
https://www.heritage.org/courts/commentary/how-affirmative-action-colleges-hurts-minority-students
A lot of sleight of hand is used to keep from admitting that the policy doesn’t actually do what it aspires to and doesn’t actually achieve what it pretends to achieve.
Of note in the above:
“As University of San Diego law professor and U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Gail Heriot details in a Special Report for the Heritage Foundation, there’s a similar dropout rate among students admitted due to affirmative action policies and white students admitted as “legacies” with entering credentials that match those of students admitted because of a race preference.
“This highlights the problem of academic “mismatch,” regardless of skin color. When a student’s entering credentials put him or her at the bottom of the class, it should come as no surprise when he or she switches to an easier major, drops out, or fails out. It’s become increasingly clear that affirmative action is doing more harm than good to the very people it is intended to help.”
I saw this close up in the day job. It did not help anybody. It is a close kin to The Peter Principle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
The main difference is that Peter Principle victims are set up to fail because it is assumed they can succeed because they succeeded before. Meritless admissions aren’t that naive: their victims are setup to fail in service to agendas not their own: donations, exploitaition, ideology.
Note that Academic Mismatch applies both to AA, legacy, and athletic admissions. In all cases they are set up to sink or swim in an environment they are not prepared to succeed in. Preferential admissions usually stop at admission without providing the remedial training required to truly compete on a truly level field.
It is the equivalent of Social Promotion in K-12.
Also worth noting: the practice is not ending anytime soon. SCOTUS simply drove it underground.