Comment by rayiner

> There are few, if any, race neutral approaches that can’t be gamed

The race-conscious approaches are heavily gamed too. The minority students at elite universities are rarely people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Most often, they’re the children of affluent minorities, often elites from latin america or africa who have no connection to discrimination in the U.S.

Ironically, you’re engaged in some wild racial stereotyping by flipping back and forth between race and economic circumstances. Do you think there aren’t lots of affluent minorities in the U.S.? Harvard doesn’t let in poor minorities.

> the only motivation for such approaches is to satisfy those who are so fervently against the idea of affirmative action

Yes, institutions must satisfy those who are against grouping people together by race and treating them differently on that basis. That’s not only the law, but the law is correct.

> so it’s really just the stupid rich kids who benefit the most from “merit-based” admissions, not some humble, poor, but brilliant, child of the wrong race.

The evidence shows that the people who benefit the most from objective, merit-based admissions is smart lower-class kids of all races.

> There’s absolutely no shortage of educational opportunities.

That doesn’t justify grouping people based on race and treating them differently.

> I’m not sure why you’re arguing about Harvard. It impacts such a small percentage of the population.

Have you read any of the record in SFFA? Harvard just happened to be the headline name. Almost every institution does it. The medical school data I posted up thread is aggregated across all medical schools.

And elite institutions like Harvard are especially important because they’re gatekeepers. That’s how racial preferences jumped the air gap from universities to corporations. While universities had a carve out for affirmative action, employers never did. Race-conscious policies have always been illegal in the employment context (as the Supreme Court recently affirmed 9-0). But Ivy-educated people took those ideas from universities into the workplace and a bunch of Harvard-educated lawyers gave very bad advice.

> Am I “discriminating” against my child Peter when I give his brother Paul a cookie because his other brother Pedro stole Paul’s cookie at lunch

In this hypo, neither Paul nor Peter’s cookie was stolen. People aren’t reincarnations of their oppressed ancestors.