I haven't studied all immigrants across all periods but I have studied Chinese and Japanese immigration in California from the gold rush and railroads to WWII and white immigrant groups through New York around the Civil War and I think institutionally speaking, the Chinese and Japanese had it worse. I think the difference in treatment of German-Americans and Japanese-Americans during WWII by the US Government pretty much sums it up. German-Americans weren't tossed into internment camps while Japanese-Americans were. That's a pretty stark contrast.
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Well one of those groups had been there for 150+ years while the other just started arriving about 30 years (correct me if I'm wrong) at that point. It will forever be a stain on American history but the circumstances were very different. Also you might not know this, but people like my own grandfather weren't allowed into the european theater and were sent to the pacific because he had German ancestry. He was good enough to die for the war effort, but not good enough to be trusted (and his German ancestry arrived in the US sometime before 1800, and if i'm correctly informed was only a 1/4).
I don't want to belittle legitimate Asian American grievances, sorry if it sounded like that. I just wanted to point out that they pretty much lived, and are living, the american experience like most immigrant groups did, including an excelling 2nd generation. I understand that you don't need convincing that this experience wasn't shared by everyone.
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Speaking of sending people to World War II, I just want to butt in. The same thing happened to a battalion of Japanese Americans in World War II. They were sent to Italy instead to get the blunt frontal assaults there. If I remember correctly, no other group or battalion was awarded more medals than that one in U.S. military history.
So basically, the United States is historically the land of global discrimination, but now of hope and glory?
A little bit older than that but I understand your point. I definitely don't think you are trying to belittle the grievances so we're on the same page I think. I just think sometimes people forget, especially here in California, that while the state is currently very progressive, historically there was tons of institutional discrimination in that era against Asian immigrants and Native Americans.
I think for some professions they have their uses, and in the last century, they achieved a lot of good things.
I work on tech though, so I wouldn’t even consider working for a company that has a union, let alone join one.
I work on tech though, so I wouldn’t even consider working for a company that has a union, let alone join one.
Wow, that is a very high quality post, a hat doff to you goodsir!
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I strongly recommend listening to the Strict Scrutiny Podcast for a recap of all the opinions this week if anyone wants a first rate (and entertaining) analysis by some of the top lawyers in the US.
Indian reservation system makes much more sense than American affirmative action one. The very basis of affirmative action seemed to be similar to the reservation for SC/ST in India which is that Afro-Americans were historically driven to a poorer status in society due to discriminatory policies followed by the state and the general populace. So it absolutely makes sense that it should exist in US. A number of other things do not make sense though.Haha, it's funny that "we Asians" can become exactly as oppressed as needed based on the requirements of the argument.
"Asians" as a group earn the most in the US, by far:
I don't think "Asians" are all "daughters of the boat people" though...
That's *massive* variation within the almost-meaningless umbrella category "Asian". Using the struggles of the worst off among them, to argue for an easier road for the best off, does not make sense. (And if colleges were doing the same generalisation, which I expect they do, that's a bad thing too).
I don't understand US undergrad admissions much. It seems like a very complicated thing, based on scores and essays and legacies and donations and subjective evaluations.
But other countries - Asian countries - have affirmative action programs without the subjective features of the US. In my college in India, we had a score, and a quota (more stringent type of affirmative action), no essay, no legacy, just a list based on test rank.
I know that in China it is also a score (from the Gao kao), but they also have affirmative action: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_China
For starters, there absolutely should be a racial quota for blacks in US who have been there for generations and have suffered due to racial policies. US SC striking that down in an earlier judgement was probably a worse decision. This has led to the current ambiguity over the way AA is implemented by likes of Harvard. Much published stats establish that AA at Ivies results in not only the admission of mostly Afro-Americans who are relatively well placed but also of Black immigrants who were not even necessarily impacted by the whole slavery business in US. Now that does not mean that they do not suffer the consequences of racism in current day America. But then what is the basis for AA? If it is driven by repartition linked justice similar to SC/ST reservation system in India then it has to be tied to the historical injustice suffered by some category of Americans. The way it is being implemented is similar to DEI initiatives in corporate world where only the final make up of a group of people is deemed to be a achievable end goal.
This brings in the other problem of US moving from a binary racial place to current era of multi-racial one. AA for Latinos was also openly talked about in the light of this ruling. The basis for the same seems even less clear since that can not be tied to slavery. So then it must mean that since a vast portion of Latinos in America lag behind in US college admissions to top schools, similar to Afro-Americans, they are being afforded the same privilege of AA. But is it then the just tied to socio-economic status of Latinos or the need of Harvard to have a diverse student body? If it is the former then economic status becomes a much better framing for AA. If it is the latter then the majority opinion's contention of schools trying to implement an overall racial quota actually seems valid. Take a hypothetical where an Asian family and Latin family immigrate to US from the same country, with both falling in lower economic strata. The current system of AA would mean that an applicant from Asian family likely has much harder chance to get admitted than Latin one simply because Asians in US are already doing well, as pointed out by you. It is hard to argue in this case, how race of one applicant is actually not causing discrimination against them simply because of the end goal of a college to have a diverse representation.
I actually agree with Harvard that having a diverse student body provides a better learning environment but then there needs to be intellectual honestly that achieving that end goal would automatically result in some level of discrimination against groups that are over-represented.
You remind me of this comic a lot.
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Can mocking people validly point out the fallacies committed by another guy bring anything constructive to the debate apart from that childish "ya I got ya!" feeling? Internet and social media are turning people into imbeciles in political debates where people think that whoever stays calm and making the other side mad wins the "debate", but the actual loser is the society and justice at large.You remind me of this comic a lot.
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I am equally against legacy admissions.
"Asians factually needing a higher SAT score to get into a certain university" and "Asians being an overrepresented group in university campuses" are separate things conceptually and can coexist.
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1. higher income doesn't support or prove socioeconomic privilege (but of course growing up in a conformist culture can be a "privilege" to some people). A group of people can achieve high income (on average) notwithstanding the disadvantages, discriminations and glass ceilings they face, as a result of diligence. I didn't spend too many years in the US but I did face discriminations on a few occasions on the street, some people just called me names and made mockery expression when I just walked on the street and did nothing else.Haha, it's funny that "we Asians" can become exactly as oppressed as needed based on the requirements of the argument.
"Asians" as a group earn the most in the US, by far:
I don't think "Asians" are all "daughters of the boat people" though...
That's *massive* variation within the almost-meaningless umbrella category "Asian". Using the struggles of the worst off among them, to argue for an easier road for the best off, does not make sense. (And if colleges were doing the same generalisation, which I expect they do, that's a bad thing too).
I don't understand US undergrad admissions much. It seems like a very complicated thing, based on scores and essays and legacies and donations and subjective evaluations.
But other countries - Asian countries - have affirmative action programs without the subjective features of the US. In my college in India, we had a score, and a quota (more stringent type of affirmative action), no essay, no legacy, just a list based on test rank.
I know that in China it is also a score (from the Gao kao), but they also have affirmative action: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_China
Asian Last Names Lead To Fewer Job Interviews, Still
https://www.npr.org/sections/codesw...last-names-lead-to-fewer-job-interviews-still
2. As a matter of fact 59% of Asian Americans are foreign-born, how much "privilege" do you expect an immigrant can earn in the US?
3. There are lots of discontent on AA in China as well, and providing special quotas for ethnic minorities is quite different from "punishing" an ethnic minority because that group of people try too hard and do too well in university entrance exams, on average.
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Counter point: https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-...ve-action-had-to-leave-asian-americans-behind
Most of the polls show that majority of Asian Americans are against AA. Trying to explain that away as some kind of trick by white supremacists is intellectual dishonesty. It is better to tackle this issue by at least assigning the grievances Asian community in US has against them rather than wish it away as something manufactured. It could even be that these grievances are rooted in prejudice. I can at least attest that Indian Americans can harbour racist views wrt the black community. US liberal/progressive block want non-whites to be a monolith block working towards common social justice goals but this is simply not the case. Even majority or half of the hispanics do not favor AA.
Immigrants from China and India to US who get Visas on the basis of job in corporate sector, definitely have some privilege purely on the basis of the economic status borne out of these relatively high paying jobs. This does translate into their children getting somewhat better opportunities to have a crack at college admissions. But it also can not be denied that Indian/Chinese/Korean culture of strong focus on academic rigour automatically results in them getting better odds at getting admissions. As much as left may want, not everything can be explained by privilege. Just take spelling bee contests in US for example, they are dominated by a ridiculous degree by Indian Americans. Nothing to do with privilege otherwise the white folks would at least be as competitive but probably due to culture of book cramming that can exist within some Indian communities.
That is still not what I wrote. I for one would never see conformism as an advantage in the bigger picture, I am an individualist. I said certain cultures promote the same conformism that school promotes.
Anything added to that happened in your head.
it isn’t really a counterpoint because jay is a cultural writer. he is riffing on the subject unlike someone like John C. Yang from this article or Sally Chen from this article whose job is to study and advocate for the rights of asian americans. I am plenty familiar with kang’s work and he got slammed when he tried to make similar arguments in his book, the loneliest americans. I like kang for his takes on basketball(which is what he is known for) compared to any of his other stuff. If the majority of the polls show asian americans being overwhelmingly opposed to affirmative action like you say, then great, what are we even arguing about?
the relationship between the asian american experience, model minority myth, or any immigrant experience with white supremacy is very well documented and studied going back to the early 1900s. none of this is a new concept or a gotcha answer. I’ve got nothing else to add except share a few more articles and data that I think are good references.
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/30/1185520446/what-asian-americans-really-think-of-affirmative-action
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The comic does have some implication that you may or may not get, and that you may or may not care about if you do get it, so it's not just mocking.
There are few things more useless in the world than just naming fallacies like they're magic spells. If you want to actually accomplish something, and not just be a debate bro, why not explain the mistakes in reasoning? That way you're also less likely to make mistakes. It is for instance perfectly reasonable to listen to experts over randoms, "argument from authority" is only fallacious if the authority isn't real or if it's stated too strongly (X is true because the expert says so, instead of it's reasonable to believe X because the expert says so).
I have already explained the mistake in entropy's reasoning and he just ended up "I am more than happy to take the side of folks mentioned in this article who are more knowledgeable about the issue than you." He just can't and didn't explain the mechanism of how affirmative action i.e. requiring asian americans to get a higher SAT score to get into the same university, enhance Asian Americans' share in US universities and just use the opinion of John Yang, the president and executive director of civil rights nonprofit Asian Americans Advancing Justice, to "prove" so.
Do you think that it is constructive to a debate if all people engaged in it just "hey he is the expert and you are not, I listen to him, not you!"? It will basically kill all the logical debates. So basically all senior politicians are "political experts" of some sort and so you as a random John Doe has less capability to make a judgment on a policy or a political event? Experts' views do differ on very fundamental aspect and which expert should you listen to ?
" There are few things more useless in the world than just naming fallacies like they're magic spells." again, a blank rhetoric with no substance, people do commit fallacies all the time, why is pointing out the logical fallacies committed by a fellow internet user more useless than, say, swearing, bullying or trolling?
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It's about as constructive as naming logical fallacies, at the very least.
Have fun screwing up your place of residence.
I'm sure there's a latin phrase for this.
There are few things more useless in the world than your reply.
Mind projection fallacy.
Of course it does, especially in conjunction with the outsized percentage of Asian Americans in attendance at high end private schools. Their economic situation has provided them access to the most elite of educational institutions. That is precisely the definition of socioeconomic privilege when applied to academia.
Very good podcast on the topic
Don't want to spend time arguing over polls since seemingly different one say differently. This article by NYT quotes a couple that provide the conclusion I used: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/us/politics/affirmative-action-polls.html
I fundamentally disagree with a lot of points in the article quoted by you. Even outside the polls, anecdotal evidence such as even the NYT comment section shows that it is not just a loud minority within Asian American group that is not supportive of AA. I believe majority probably would not have favoured such a major public action to oppose it which is also borne out from some poll results. The article even points to similar issues Asians have faced in high school system changing criteria of admission to benefit more Americans and Lations. In those cases, Asian populace on the ground in city like SF already made their stance clear by running campaigns like recall of student board executives: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/us/san-francisco-school-board-parents.html
I think Kang's point on the verdict and resulting discourse mostly focussing on binary of White and Black races, almost entirely ignoring Asians was a valid one. Again, I would contend that is is a result of the subjective nature of the implementation of AA by likes of Harvard. Where instead of being driven purely by reparative justice for Afro-American population, it is used to achieved DEI driven result which confuses matter by bringing a number of races into it. A hard 5-10% reservation quota, written into law or constitution, for a population held back by discriminative state policies that continued for centuries, would yield much better results.
Second, even progressive admission counsellors acknowledge the disadvantage asians face where same profile of application by an application from Latino or Afro-American background would have much better chance of getting admitted. There are accounts from them and students which testify to the need of applicants having to hide their Asian identify within their application artefacts such as essays. There may be no way around this if you even want to implement some kind of AA, even on the basis of class. So it is fine but odd to want to obfuscate or not acknowledge the same.
Finally, it is a mistake by progressives to alienate Asian-Americans who might not agree with AA or some of the efforts to even diversify student population in certain schools. Like I mentioned, you are not going to get a single monolith of non-white population in US. Most Asians will continue to put outsized importance on issues such as academics and college admissions. I personally don't see this changing even with any kind of generation shift, at least not in next few decades. Does not make sense to reduce your base on the basis of a single issue.
the better outcome (greater average income, greater chance of attendance at high end schools) does not prove privilege, since a better outcome can be achieved notwithstanding being underprivileged ("privilege" is of course a subjective term, you may say being born in a conformist culture emphasizing hardwork is a "privilege"). Otherwise you can say all NBA stars are privileged people. How can an ethnic minority being discriminated (to a lesser extent than some other racese maybe) be a privileged class?
of course the second generation asians bred by their professional or rich asian parents start to enjoy the economic privilege.
I am not sure what exactly you are trying to get at tbh. because even in the link, you posted pew research clearly says the majority of asian democrats approve of affirmative action while asian republicans do not. everyone on god's green earth knows that the majority of asian americans identify as democrats. so I am not sure how that leads to conclusions like "most polls show asian americans overwhelmingly disapprove of the policy". like I said in my post, if this was the case, what are we even arguing about in the first place? secondly, of course, you agree with jay. most asians do. duh. he made the exact arguments in his book and when confronted by those who reviewed his book, he did not have an answer and ended up having a meltdown and deleting his twitter account. I also don't think anyone in their right frame of mind would consider jay even remotely capable or qualified enough of arguing against sotomayer's dissent which he so bravely does in the article.
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Then we're in agreement. I understand that some person that worked himself up from nothing and into wealth were not themselves aided along by privilege. The outcome for that person, though, becomes the launching pad from which the subsequent generation takes off. Growing up, Shaq was not socio-economically privileged. Shaq's kids, however, are. This is precisely the issue when it comes to attendance at elite schools and subsequent academic attainment though.
On average Asian Americans have been at the top of the tree economically for over a generation (pg2, pg 4 chart). They've always been academically fastidious too. Even in 1997 Asian Americans were more likely to take extra curricular classes; attend private academic enrichment programs, more likely to get training to pass SATs etc (Pg 46 & 47 here). The same book also finds that Asian American parents were more willing to engage with their children academically at home. Now I can't find information on elite pre-college attendance back then, but given Asian-American focus on academic attainment I can't imagine it would be enormously different in proportion to what it is now.
Overall we get a generational picture of a wealthy cohort of society leveraging their position to the best of their ability to prioritise academic attainment in their offspring. On average (and I stress on average) the typical Asian American child is better prepared and placed than any other demographic to excel academically. What I am saying is that now, today, and for at least a generation, this is at least somewhat a function of socioeconomic privilege.
Totally agree with you on the second tweet - legacy admissions at Ivies are a fecking disgrace!
However, Michael Steele's tweet is completely inaccurate.
What's more important, reverse discrimination is clear in the admission process at Harvard. If you examine the admission data, an Asian candidate in the tenth highest academic decile had 12.7% chance of admittance, still lower than a Black candidate in the fourth highest decile at 12.8%. If you don't think that's bullshit than there's nothing else to talk about.
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Well, thats what choosing certain words in your tertiary language does to someone sometimes. Pointing this out, when is quite obvious, to make fun of the poster, makes you not only obvliously privileged but a sad personI'm "obliviosly" "priviledged" - yes!
I came to this country as a poor 17-yr old, got an academic scholarship, supported myself through college often working 20 hrs while studying my ass off and crushing it. Then worked a demanding finance job, often 70-80 hrs a week, crushed it, went to Yale for grad - where I graduated near the top of my class and then worked my ass off for the next 18 years.
I've got nothing handed to me - other than opportunity - I've had to fight and work hard for everything. My start in this country was certainly harder than 99.9% of Americans born here (considering my background, ethnicity, religion, lack of acclimatization, language skills etc). So I had to chuckle about "obliviosly privildeged" (you probably meant obvious privilege).
And since English is my tertiary language as well, I will make fun of you.
It seems to me that some here don't exactly understand the underlying logic of affirmative action. Affirmative action starts from the premise that, all else being equal, every race would have about the same level of academic achievement on average, because intelligence is equivalent amongst races. I assume (hope) everyone can at least agree on that - after all, that same premise is why the Supreme Court just rejected affirmative action.
Okay, so every race should have relatively equal academic outcomes in a vacuum. But of course, in American reality, there are significant differences, with African Americans and Native Americans - the groups who faced the most significant forms of institutionalized racism - having the worst outcomes (Latinos also have lower academic outcomes and have faced racism, but not to the same extent, amongst other historical distinctions).
Hopefully those are two facts everyone can accept - race does not equate to innate intelligence, and African Americans and Native Americans have significantly worse academic outcomes than other races. Following that logic, the African American who achieves the relatively best academic outcomes, given their situation, likely has a similar level of innate intelligence to the white or Asian person who, in their situation, achieves the best outcomes.
Thus, the logic of affirmative action is that the highest achievers amongst races with overall lower academic outcomes are effectively equivalent to the highest achievers amongst races with higher academic outcomes. I think everyone, liberal or conservative, would agree that, in the absence of documented socioeconomic racial disparities, affirmative action would have no place in society. But given that those disparities do exist, affirmative action seeks to acknowledge that certain races have better or worse academic outcomes because of those disparities, but that those within a race who achieve the relatively best outcomes are likely to be of similar innate intelligence/ability.
I can't speak so much for the socioeconomic context of other countries, but as an American who wrote reports in college on the long term effects of racism on both African Americans and Native Americans, non-Americans need to understand that these races, for a variety of historical reasons, suffered more severe consequences than other races. Personally, I think possibly the biggest factor that is largely unique to African Americans and Native Americans, as opposed to other races, is the institutionalized severing of cultural and family ties. Africans taken as slaves were obviously completely cut off from whatever culture and they were taken from, and slave owners made a habit of splitting up slave families as well. Native Americans were forced on reservations, forcibly 're-educated' to be more 'American,' and had a large percentage of their children taken away to be raised by some random white family.
Relatedly, neither African Americans nor Native Americans had any capital to fall back on, because they had been forcibly removed from their homes. And because of ongoing racism, it has been very difficult of either race to build up capital. Even today, in America the median white household is worth 7.8 times as much as the median black household, and 6.9 times as much on average - https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-black-white-wealth-gap-left-black-households-more-vulnerable/. (Native American numbers are a little more odd on this front, likely because the US Government has been paying reparations in the form of casino licenses for decades now.)
Perhaps the best example of the long-term negative effects American racism has caused is seen in maternal mortality statistics. The headliner: "Notably, the pregnancy-related mortality rate for Black women who completed college education or higher is 5.2 times higher than the rate for White women with the same educational attainment and 1.6 times higher than the rate for White women with less than a high school diploma." https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-a...h-current-status-and-efforts-to-address-them/. (Native Americans also have significantly worse outcomes than other races, though still far less than for African Americans.)
Here's a similar study - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4207849/. "Foreign-born non-Hispanic black women had significantly lower rates of PTB compared to US-born non-Hispanic black women in a fully adjusted model. Sub-Saharan African-born black women compared to Caribbean-born black women had significantly lower rates of PTB and SGA. These differences could not be explained by adjustment for known risk factors obtained from vital records. Considerable heterogeneity in rates of PTB and SGA among non-Hispanic black women in the US by maternal nativity was documented and remained unexplained after adjustment for known risk factors."
My hypothesis is that the above disparities are the results of literally centuries of institutionalized (and generalized) racism leading to long-term health consequences as a result of stress and trauma, etc. - https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/10/chronic-stress, https://www.henryford.com/blog/2022/10/generational-trauma.
Anyway, the point of this whole diversion was to provide support, at least in the context of the United States, for continuing affirmative action programs in some way (ideally with a much higher emphasis placed on achievement relative to socioeconomic background.) As noted, in an ideal world, no such program would be necessary. But given the historical context with which we are dealing, I believe it is an acceptable method to try and (in some way) address centuries of disenfranchisement, segregation, and cultural destruction.
Okay, so every race should have relatively equal academic outcomes in a vacuum. But of course, in American reality, there are significant differences, with African Americans and Native Americans - the groups who faced the most significant forms of institutionalized racism - having the worst outcomes (Latinos also have lower academic outcomes and have faced racism, but not to the same extent, amongst other historical distinctions).
Hopefully those are two facts everyone can accept - race does not equate to innate intelligence, and African Americans and Native Americans have significantly worse academic outcomes than other races. Following that logic, the African American who achieves the relatively best academic outcomes, given their situation, likely has a similar level of innate intelligence to the white or Asian person who, in their situation, achieves the best outcomes.
Thus, the logic of affirmative action is that the highest achievers amongst races with overall lower academic outcomes are effectively equivalent to the highest achievers amongst races with higher academic outcomes. I think everyone, liberal or conservative, would agree that, in the absence of documented socioeconomic racial disparities, affirmative action would have no place in society. But given that those disparities do exist, affirmative action seeks to acknowledge that certain races have better or worse academic outcomes because of those disparities, but that those within a race who achieve the relatively best outcomes are likely to be of similar innate intelligence/ability.
I can't speak so much for the socioeconomic context of other countries, but as an American who wrote reports in college on the long term effects of racism on both African Americans and Native Americans, non-Americans need to understand that these races, for a variety of historical reasons, suffered more severe consequences than other races. Personally, I think possibly the biggest factor that is largely unique to African Americans and Native Americans, as opposed to other races, is the institutionalized severing of cultural and family ties. Africans taken as slaves were obviously completely cut off from whatever culture and they were taken from, and slave owners made a habit of splitting up slave families as well. Native Americans were forced on reservations, forcibly 're-educated' to be more 'American,' and had a large percentage of their children taken away to be raised by some random white family.
Relatedly, neither African Americans nor Native Americans had any capital to fall back on, because they had been forcibly removed from their homes. And because of ongoing racism, it has been very difficult of either race to build up capital. Even today, in America the median white household is worth 7.8 times as much as the median black household, and 6.9 times as much on average - https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-black-white-wealth-gap-left-black-households-more-vulnerable/. (Native American numbers are a little more odd on this front, likely because the US Government has been paying reparations in the form of casino licenses for decades now.)
Perhaps the best example of the long-term negative effects American racism has caused is seen in maternal mortality statistics. The headliner: "Notably, the pregnancy-related mortality rate for Black women who completed college education or higher is 5.2 times higher than the rate for White women with the same educational attainment and 1.6 times higher than the rate for White women with less than a high school diploma." https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-a...h-current-status-and-efforts-to-address-them/. (Native Americans also have significantly worse outcomes than other races, though still far less than for African Americans.)
Here's a similar study - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4207849/. "Foreign-born non-Hispanic black women had significantly lower rates of PTB compared to US-born non-Hispanic black women in a fully adjusted model. Sub-Saharan African-born black women compared to Caribbean-born black women had significantly lower rates of PTB and SGA. These differences could not be explained by adjustment for known risk factors obtained from vital records. Considerable heterogeneity in rates of PTB and SGA among non-Hispanic black women in the US by maternal nativity was documented and remained unexplained after adjustment for known risk factors."
My hypothesis is that the above disparities are the results of literally centuries of institutionalized (and generalized) racism leading to long-term health consequences as a result of stress and trauma, etc. - https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/10/chronic-stress, https://www.henryford.com/blog/2022/10/generational-trauma.
Anyway, the point of this whole diversion was to provide support, at least in the context of the United States, for continuing affirmative action programs in some way (ideally with a much higher emphasis placed on achievement relative to socioeconomic background.) As noted, in an ideal world, no such program would be necessary. But given the historical context with which we are dealing, I believe it is an acceptable method to try and (in some way) address centuries of disenfranchisement, segregation, and cultural destruction.
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