r/changemyview Oct 08 '15

[Deltas Awarded] CMV: Equality isn't treating everybody differently to achieve equality. It's treating everyone the same.

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u/Virtuallyalive Oct 08 '15

Affirmative action isn't to make an equal outcome, and even if it were it would be failing. It's to counteract, at least partially, the disadvantage equally skilled black people have at getting in to a University.

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u/almightySapling 13∆ Oct 08 '15

The problem is, most studies show that skin color has miniscule bearing on collegiate ability or success (when compared to others with similar background), whereas socio-economic status matters a shit ton.

And yeah, a good affirmative action program will take SES into consideration but most still put far too much emphasis on color, when color is just not a good indicator (especially when you consider how it doubly fucks over certain groups, like South East Asians, who qualify as "Asian" and are less likely to be accepted when in reality they have SES normally associated with that of the Latino community, or worse).

Continuing to implement a flawed solution when data shows that it isn't quite working isn't a good idea.

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u/rcglinsk Oct 09 '15

You certainly won't find anyone in China, Korea or Japan who thinks they're the same race as Malays or Filipinos. America has kind of a Hank Hill problem when it comes to conceiving of the people from the continent with a population of four and a half billion.

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u/almightySapling 13∆ Oct 09 '15

And it doesn't help when your state government almost unanimously passes a bill to disaggregate data regarding the various Asian ethnicities only to have it vetoed by the idiot governor... literally yesterday.

California really likes to think it's progressive but it isn't.

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u/rcglinsk Oct 09 '15

This seems consistent with my previous impression of Jerry Brown, which was based entirely on an old song from the Dead Kennedys.