But favoring legacy status in admissions is a form of racial discrimination because non-white people are much, much less likely to have legacy at elite institutions.
Everything correlates with race. Height, disease, money, eye color, divorce, number of pokemon cards, you name it.
You may as well call it eye-color discrimination, height discrimination, pokemon card discrimination, etc, as well. It just makes no sense at that point.
So what exactly is the point of calling it racial discrimination then? Isn't every single policy racist then?
I agree, but we shouldn't be blind to discrimination that correlates with race, because enough of it can be equivalent to racial discrimination at a population level.
Fortunately for people of color, it is. You don't have to say you're discriminating based on race in order to be doing so, and the law acknowledges this. That is how gerrymandered district maps can get struck down on the basis of racial discrimination. We do actually get to look at reality when we are deciding if an act is racist.
Yes but it is much more dangerous to assume that correlation can't imply intent. Because sometimes it does.
It is a costly, time consuming and cumbersome process, but the legal system is quite used to it since almost every single criminal case involve some aspects of establishing intent.
Under current interpretation of civil rights laws, district maps can get struck down on the basis of racial discrimination if they are not sufficiently gerrymandered.
Since it’s the most recent high visibility VRA districting case, let me just say from the outset, the SCOTUS case involving the AL congressional map is most definitely not such an example.
(obviously one can argue about the intent until the cows come home if you wish, but the outcomes are more a matter of fairly straightforward facts about the world).
We should point it out when it happens. Most of us know what sorts of stunts were pulled with Jim Crow era laws. None of these were explicably racist on paper, but we all know they intended racism and exclusion. And these sorts of policies continue that tradition, even if it wasn't meant to.
If a policy winds up being discriminatory like this, we should call it out and change it. Not doing so means silently agreeing with the discrimination. The justification matters little.
Isn't every single policy racist then?
Obviously not.