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babylonsister

(171,806 posts)
Sat Jul 1, 2023, 03:15 PM Jul 2023

The Rude Pundit: In Its Affirmative Action Decision, the Supreme Court Shits on Higher Education [View all]

https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2023/07/in-its-affirmative-action-decision.html

The Rude Pundit
Proudly lowering the level of political discourse
7/01/2023
In Its Affirmative Action Decision, the Supreme Court Shits on Higher Education


snip//

See, in the roughly 250 or so years I've been teaching, I've led classes with little to no racial diversity and classes with extraordinary diversity. I've seen how diversity in hiring has an effect on the students and I've seen how diversity within the classroom impacts all students, white and non-white. So let me put this plainly: diversity and equity in higher education are pedagogically important in the classroom in a way that continues after graduation. Lemme put it even more plainly: this shit matters so that students of all races learn how to fucking exist in the real world.

snip//

And what about the notion put forth by some on the right that we just don't need affirmative action programs anymore? That's bullshit. "Current rates of change suggest that it would take about 70 years for all not-for-profit institutions to reflect underrepresented students fully in their incoming student population...For Black and Native American students and for faculty from all underrepresented populations, there was effectively no progress from 2013 to 2020," says a 2022 report. If anything, the actual numbers would call for more intensive emphasis on diverse recruitment. That's reality. And we know in places where affirmative action has been banned that the numbers of Black and Hispanic students dropped a whole lot in flagship universities.

Roberts goes on endlessly about the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. But if you're going to apply it to justify eliminating programs that attempt to enhance the education of all students under the idea that all races aren't being treated absolutely, totally, constantly equal all the time, then why not use it to ensure that equality of opportunity in all education is assured? Why not force states to make sure that public schools in all places are offering the same level of funding and same level of services? In other words, if you wanna eliminate the need for affirmative action, then eliminate some of the things that cause it to be necessary.

Or you just want to harm Black and brown people and don't give a fuck otherwise.


(Note: I can't leave this fucked up discussion without saying something about elite colleges, two of which were the defendants in these cases. Really, this was all about some students upset they didn't get accepted to Harvard or UNC-Chapel Hill, even though they might not have gotten in anyways. It's fucking absurd that we give so much importance to schools that are circle jerks of privilege, as if that's the only route to success in an area. US News and World Report's rankings can go suck all the dicks. You can get an amazing education in hundreds of other schools. Why would you want to got to schools that let George W. Bush or Jared Kushner in just because of their rich daddies?)
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