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Comment by bigendian1234 | Hacker News Reader

FWIW, I'm a white person who used to think of affirmative action as unfair discrimination. That was true until I spent time volunteering teaching technical skills to kids in poor immigrant neighborhoods. Now that I have had an up close experience with these communities, I'm here to tell you institutional racism is real and we're far from it making sense to end these programs.

There simply is not a quick easy solution and those who are not oppressed simply have no real frame of reference to understand the problem. I encourage every person who feels these programs are unfair to spend time volunteering in poor minority communities.

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Do you think the kids in poor immigrant neighborhoods are in worse positions than poor kids in eastern Kentucky? Because the current policies treat white kids from trailer parks like white kids from fancy suburbs. And they treat FOB Asians like they are doctor's children. And black kids from fancy suburbs are treated as if they came from poor ghettos.

The idea that "oppression" is limited to dimensions of race and gender, rather than ethnic/economic/geographic/etc is as juvenile as it is political useful.

You have had up close experience with one kind of disadvantaged community, and act as if that is the only group that has it. The difference between urban communities and places like Clay County, Kentucky is that volunteers like you won't ever get sent to Kentucky.

> Do you think the kids in poor immigrant neighborhoods are in worse positions than poor kids in eastern Kentucky?

Your line of reasoning did a dodge there, swapping out between geographic demographics and racial demographics.

I don't think all kids in poor immigrant neighborhoods are in worse positions than poor kids in Eastern Kentucky. I do think that all the white-looking kids in eastern Kentucky, regardless of other factors stacked against them, will never be denied a job, loan, or rental opportunity based on the color of their skin. I can't say the same for the kids from any of those regions who don't look white.

It’s almost 2020, not 1940. We have major cities that are majority nonwhite. We have entire statewide school districts that are mostly nonwhite. We have huge metropolitan areas that are mostly nonwhite. You can walk into an expensive luxury apartment complex in an immigrant heavy city and find tons of nonwhite people.

The Little Rock Nine was 1957. What do you believe happened to all those people who protested and threatened violence against those children? What do you think they taught their children?

The idea that we have somehow magically eradicated racism over the course of a single generation astounds me.

Seriously, it's almost 2020. You should get how close to the 1960s that is.

Just want to point out that in the same time period, Asians were heavily discriminated against in northern California.

And yet there is no trace of it now. I doubt you have set foot in Arkansas, because your implication that the attitudes haven't changed much is grossly inaccurate.

And yet the data still shows widespread economic disparity due to discrimination

The data also shows widespread economic disparity due to geography, yet Harvard doesn't give the poor kids an extra 200 points on their SAT. If Harvard actually cared about this issue they would create additional scholarship programs that review people on a case-by-case basis rather than a blanket policy.

geography isn't a protected class. it's not a class at all. it's a set of circumstances. your skin color and the privileges or liabilities incurred are inescapable.

> geography isn't a protected class

Frequently it is. Many laws specifically protect "national origin".

Kentucky isn't a "national origin."

Kentucky doesn't has the support a specific national origin might have because there are no laws about that yet. It's an analogy.

If you think "being from Kentucky" should be treated the same as "being from Ireland," you're welcome to make a case to your Congressperson.

Good luck.

>Many laws specifically protect "national origin"

What laws? The US Constitution provides significantly greater protections to US Citizens than foreign nationals, as many of rights are not extended to non-citizens.

i love this kind of red herring: we're very obviously talking about intranational geography. as the person below me quips: kentucky isn't a nation of origin.

> And yet the data still shows widespread economic disparity due to discrimination

The data shows widespread economic disparity. It does not show the cause, which may or may not be discrimination.

It's not fair to hurt people just because you think others have been hurt. You're just furthering the abuse. Many white people have been denied housing, education, and jobs because of their skin. You can't solve ignorance with more ignorance. You're literally talking about ruining peoples' lives because of your racism.

> Many white people have been denied housing, education, and jobs because of their skin.

[citation needed]

This is actually factually incorrect. White kids from different economic backgrounds are treated identically != race-conscious admissions policies as they are currently described in the ruling. And FOB Asians is not an economic class, so I am not sure what argument you are trying to make. Is FOB Asian supposed to be poor? Because you need them to visit some places like Vancouver and Waterloo.

I think your point that oppression is not only racial but socioeconomic is not misguided. But as I understand it, the ruling does not preclude adjustments based on the access and opportunity limitations you refer to, which are not strictly limited to a particular race.

>Do you think the kids in poor immigrant neighborhoods are in worse positions than poor kids in eastern Kentucky?

You have to distinguish affirmative action (in hiring/employment) and race based factors in college admissions.

Most colleges that use race/minority status as a factor in admissions also generally also use socioeconomic status as a factor. However, I am not familiar with any employment/hiring based affirmative action that looks at socioeconomic status.

Just as an example, I went to a top 50 (at the time) public high school in the country, the school is located in a large city (hint: where Jeff Bezos went). I had a 4.0 GPA and was the 50th percentile of the class, approximately #750 out of 1500 kids in my class. Colleges take that into account and I would never have made it to an ivy league (I did get 1 offer, but because I was an athlete and they wanted me to compete for them), but all things being equal if I came from that poor rural area you reference I would be looked at like a scholar, maybe even #1 in the graduating class vs #750, and I might have had multiple Ivy league admissions.

> I would never have made it to an ivy league (I did get 1 offer

> "those who are not oppressed simply have no real frame of reference to understand the problem"

Yet somehow you think you are enlightened by a little volunteer work. as far as immigrants in America go, Asians make more money than whites. When you compare Chinese, the difference is starker.

FWIW, I don't think you were really that poor. I grew up white, male, and poor from Appalachia. I promise you, there was no privilege in that. Its a crime against humanity that someone's test scores are worth less than another's simply because they were not born with enough pigment in their skin.

On the other hand be happy you were given the poor white from Appalachia scale for your test scores rather than the middle-class Asian from New Jersey scale.

Institutional racism is real. That doesn't make these programs right, or even a solution. Ivy+ schools carefully pick out minorities who didn't grow up in poor neighborhoods. Most of these programs act as institutionalized racism, and give the appearance of doing something without the reality.

If you pick out students who had real disadvantage -- growing up with horrible schools, having uneducated parents, not speaking English, being poor -- I'd be 100% for them.

That's not what we've got.

We've got a system where Harvard will bring in black people from the "right" neighborhoods, and white people if their parents went to Harvard, taught at Harvard, or donated to Harvard.

So two wrongs make a right?

I think America largely fails its poor, black and marginalized communities, and that a ton more can and should be done, but that doesn't mean affirmative action is the right (both effectively and morally) solution, or that it's not systemacially unfair to other groups.

I'm like you. White and use to think the same. Love him or hate him, the last chapter, A Jamaican Story, in Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers really pierced my heart. I can't fathom what it must be like. I think those that despise affirmative action take things personally. They are right, sometimes it's not fair since they busted their butt, paid their dues, etc but lose out possibly because the color of their skin. It sucks and I'm sorry.

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