Hacker News Reader

Comment by beeflet | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

Is it? Almost all outcomes favor the majority. How many straight white males actually think they would have better life outcomes being born black female gay? Even with affirmative action, that only impacts a very small percentage of people at a very narrow window of time.

Why is it the job of private institutions to regulate the life outcomes of key political demographics?

Private institutions have the job of selecting the best candidates, and they don't have the right to discriminate against any candidates on the basis of race.

In one breath, supporters of affirmative action in this thread will deny that such discrimination exists, and in the other they will justify its existence. Clearly you must acknowledge on some level that it's not really defensible.

It’s a great question. And I think we are in a bit of a pickle as not doing something is just acting in the opposite way to regulate life outcomes.

It’s like gerrymandering districts and then when people want to move things back to a more normal partition you say “let’s just leave things as they are and not tinker”. But you’re now just advantaging the group that tinkered last.

When the system is dominated by the majority, and has been for a long time, a correction requires being “discriminatory against the majority”.

“The system” itself was incorrect before. This is why it’s called systemic racism/sexism/etc.

But the kids applying to colleges today had nothing to do with the history. A white (or asian) boy won't get accepted to his chosen college because of something he had no influence on, be it "history" or his skin color and gender.

Is collective punishment of kids for something they had nothing to do with really the answer?

This thread is specifically about jobs, where people are specifically evaluated on an individual basis. University admissions are a whole different discussion, but are broken in similar ways.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com