The Court takes its time on Fisher

December 10, 2015 7:59 AM

Abigail Fisher, the white student who is challenging the use of race in admissions at the university which rejected her application in 2008, was back at the Supreme Court again, as she was for the first round of arguments in her case in October 2012.

Transcript of oral argument

July 2015: Abigail Fisher, Please Stop Blaming People of Color for Your Mediocrity

Salon: Abigail Fisher deserves an ‘F’ for her race-baiting Supreme Court case aimed at boosting subpar white students

Wall Street Journal Live Blog

ThinkProgress: Abigail Fisher, SCOTUS, And What The Rhetoric About ‘Reverse Discrimination’ Ignores

Mother Jones: Justice Scalia Suggests Blacks Belong at "Slower" Colleges

Washington Post: Thoughts on today’s Fisher II Supreme Court oral argument on affirmative action

posted by roomthreeseventeen (148 comments total)

The hashtag #StayMadAbby is getting some incredible boosting from fantastic FOC on Twitter, but oh man, predictably the racism is strong with this.
posted by Kitteh at 8:01 AM on December 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think June 2016 is going to be as upsetting for progressive Court-watchers as June 2015 was happy. Kennedy has always sucked on racial and gender issues.

Scalia's quote just makes more explicit what we all knew was there all along. It's very depressing how easily prejudice can poison a powerful intellect.
posted by sallybrown at 8:07 AM on December 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

As she did last time, Justice Kagan has recused herself on this case.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:08 AM on December 10, 2015

"July 2015: Abigail Fisher, Please Stop Blaming People of Color for Your Mediocrity"

From what I recall, after some law suits, Texas changed its system to the present one, that is, the top 10% get admitted. However, this is what happened:

there are some very good and competitive high schools. parents, realizing that they needed their kids to be in the top 10%, began to take their kids out of some of those schools and put them into
schools not nearly as good or competitive. Thus a fairly decent student at a good school would not make the top 10% but moved to a school not nearly as good he or she would get into the top 10%.

I can not speak for the young woman in this case. But this is what has been going on and clearly has something to do with the issue of this Metafilter post.
posted by Postroad at 8:08 AM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

Scalia's not a powerful intellect, he's an quick-witted asshole.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:09 AM on December 10, 2015 [26 favorites]

538: Here's what happens when you ban affirmative action in college admissions
posted by shakespeherian at 8:10 AM on December 10, 2015 [6 favorites]

I've seen "Sue like a mediocre white women" wandering around twitter and it makes me pretty pleased.
posted by ChuraChura at 8:11 AM on December 10, 2015 [7 favorites]

There are two ways to read Scalia's quote. One, he's saying that a person whose grades and achievements alone are not good enough to get into a top school, but who got in anyway due to their race, will have a hard time succeeding there. (After all, there is a racial scoring gap on the SAT, with "almost no blacks among the top scorers," so if you want to admit more black students anyway you'll necessarily have to accept students with lower scores.) Or two, he's saying that all black people belong in slower schools because they're dumb. Why does Mother Jones' headline imply the second, ridiculous interpretation?
posted by Rangi at 8:13 AM on December 10, 2015 [8 favorites]

roomthreeseventeen the link seems incorrect and is broken. what's the correct one?
posted by numaner at 8:13 AM on December 10, 2015

Scalia's not a powerful intellect, he's an quick-witted asshole.


Those things are not mutually exclusive.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:13 AM on December 10, 2015

Mikki Kendall has been tweeting good stuff about this, but this one in particular is relevant.
posted by Kitteh at 8:13 AM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

Kagan recusal link
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:14 AM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

Around the turn of the century, I worked in graduate school admissions as head of the department responsible for students from their search for a grad school to their successful departure with a job in hand in the US. EO helped us in bringing more diversity in classes where creativity mattered more than test scores. Justice Scalia's comments are a throwback to more neanderthal era in global race relations. Its been going viral on African twitter, as Ivy League/Oxbridge graduates from the continent contemplate these sentiments being shared by those with political voice and power in the most powerful country on earth. Apartheid's memory is not yet faded. This, on the heels of Trump...
posted by infini at 8:15 AM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

the 538 link posted by shakesperian surprised me with how ineffective these policies are. have a look at their graphs.
posted by andrewcooke at 8:16 AM on December 10, 2015

John Roberts: “What ‘unique perspective’ does a minority student bring to a physics class?”

I don't know how the hell you can get through law school without realizing that the educational process is more than just the imparting and memorization of facts. This is really getting into willful ignorance.
posted by Sequence at 8:17 AM on December 10, 2015 [44 favorites]

Those things are not mutually exclusive.

But at the same time it's quite possible to use the latter to feign the former.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:18 AM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

John Roberts: “What ‘unique perspective’ does a minority student bring to a physics class?”

Zero.
Vedic mathematics.
Rocketry.


Lets not let our blinkers give us tunnel vision on what "minority" means in this context.
posted by infini at 8:19 AM on December 10, 2015 [25 favorites]

Why does Mother Jones' headline imply the second, ridiculous interpretation?

Because no one (Scalia included) ever seems to challenge the idea that challenging white upper/upper-middle-class students will result in their getting better. A lot of people seem to believe that human potential is locked in at the age of 18, so if you haven't gotten good at school by then -- even if you went to a shitty school because the property values in your neighborhood suck because of generations of redlining and centuries of accumulated discrimination -- well, the world needs ditch-diggers too, Danny.
posted by Etrigan at 8:19 AM on December 10, 2015 [46 favorites]

This is really getting into willful ignorance.

Remember, a large part of John Roberts' career pre-judgeship was devoted to tearing down the Voting Rights Act. Don't expect him to engage honestly with any case that involves racial representation.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:20 AM on December 10, 2015 [22 favorites]

From what I recall, after some law suits, Texas changed its system to the present one, that is, the top 10% get admitted.

This is true, as retold by NPR in their coverage of this Abby's return to court.

In 1996, the lower courts ruled that the University of Texas could not consider race at all in admissions, and the number of minorities enrolled at the school promptly plummeted by 40 percent. That, in turn, sent the political and educational establishment scrambling. The result was something called the Ten Percent Plan, enacted by the Texas state Legislature in 1997.

It guaranteed a spot at UT for any student graduating in the top 10 percent of his or her public high school class, and because Texas schools are largely segregated by housing patterns, that has ensured a small, but significant minority enrollment. Until 2003, 75 percent of the slots were filled that way, with the other 25 percent filled by combining class rank with other factors, including special skills, economic status and leadership qualities. After 2003, when the Supreme Court reaffirmed the constitutionality of affirmative action plans, UT added race and ethnicity as an additional factor that can be considered.

Enter Abigail Fisher, a white applicant who claimed she was not admitted because of her race.

UT flatly denied that less qualified black students were admitted to UT. It has said that Fisher's grades and standardized test scores were sufficiently low that she would not have been admitted under any circumstances.

Emphasis mine.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:21 AM on December 10, 2015 [35 favorites]

the 538 link posted by shakesperian surprised me with how ineffective these policies are. have a look at their graphs.

Indeed, the effect is small, but distinct and noticeable nonetheless, because it still moves us closer to a more rounded representation. Note, for example, how large the gap is from proportional representation.

Also, there's a limitation inherent in those graphs, which 538 acknowledges: they are using schools at states with and without bans, which is not a 100% match with schools maintaining an affirmative action policy (some schools in states without bans do not use affirmative action) and also make no effort to distinguish between types of affirmative action policies.
posted by mystyk at 8:23 AM on December 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

Mod note: A few comments deleted. I'd think it would go without saying, but let's not get into what people think of Fisher's looks or whatever. And please flag things rather than immediately responding, thanks.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:25 AM on December 10, 2015 [8 favorites]

H/t to Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey for this via Twitter.
posted by Kitteh at 8:26 AM on December 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

Abigail Fisher, Please Stop Blaming People of Color for Your Mediocrity

I hate articles like this. This kid (and she is still a kid) is being used as a sacrificial pawn by other folks trying to force an agenda. She's being fed a bill of goods while being thrust out in front to be the target of criticism and hatred. The stink of this will likely follow her around for years. I feel nothing but pity for her.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:30 AM on December 10, 2015 [20 favorites]

I guess I feel sorry that people are using her as the hashtag, and making the situation little vindictive. Fisher obviously feels she had a legal issue, and the Supreme Court, by granting cert, twice, agrees with her. I don't think it does anyone any good to be like #staymad.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:33 AM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

I have never before heard the rationale that affirmative action is intended to "challenge white upper/upper-middle-class students, resulting in their getting better." It's explicitly supposed to let more minority students into universities, on the grounds that admissions officers are (sub)consciously biased against them. (For particular definitions of "minority"; Asians end up being admitted less often than if only their SAT scores and grades counted.)

This is of course a good thing, but if it turns out that many of the admitted minority students were not equal to their peers except for race, and are struggling to do as well as the upper-class/white people, then what is to be done? Should we have more programs to tutor and guide lower-class/minority students, hoping that we can undo 18 years of inferior schooling and opportunity? Should we start admitting them to less challenging but still good schools? It harms everyone, of all races, to deny that a problem exists and say that those who point it out "deserve an ‘F’ for their race-baiting."

(When the Supreme Court publishes their opinion of this case, regardless of the verdict, I hope it will be free of this kind of partisan-editorial rhetoric. The dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges was disappointing.)
posted by Rangi at 8:34 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

This kid (and she is still a kid)

She's ~25 years old and could have jumped off the train by now.
posted by Etrigan at 8:35 AM on December 10, 2015 [69 favorites]

This kid (and she is still a kid) is being used as a sacrificial pawn by other folks trying to force an agenda.

She's 25. I don't see any reason to infantilize her. She's been an adult all the way through this process.
posted by maxsparber at 8:36 AM on December 10, 2015 [55 favorites]

This is of course a good thing, but if it turns out that many of the admitted minority students were not equal to their peers except for race, and are struggling to do as well as the upper-class/white people, then what is to be done?

The problem is that there are many conceivable reasons for minority students to struggle in college that have nothing to do with their academic preparedness, many of them cultural as you might expect.

The way AA in admissions is supposed to work is that everyone is supposed to meet some minimal academic threshold (which is why the allusion to the SAT gap is a smokescreen -- if all the scores are above the threshold it literally doesn't matter if Johnny's SAT score is 100 points higher than Anne's), but because that still leaves you with more applicants than you have slots you then use other criteria, race being one (along with things like athletic ability and who their parents are). I haven't seen any evidence that minority candidates are playing by a different set of rules than everyone else.
posted by AndrewInDC at 8:43 AM on December 10, 2015 [8 favorites]

This is of course a good thing, but if it turns out that many of the admitted minority students were not equal to their peers except for race, and are struggling to do as well as the upper-class/white people, then what is to be done?

You missed UT's response to Scalia's (preposterous) statement:
Garre shot back that the academic performance of minorities admitted under the affirmative action program at UT was higher than those admitted under the Ten Percent Plan. "Frankly," he added, "the solution to the problems with student body diversity is not to set up a system in which not only are minorities going to separate schools, they're going to inferior schools."
posted by hydropsyche at 8:51 AM on December 10, 2015 [41 favorites]

If people of a particular race or races are categorically doing worse on some particular test or metric that people have created, it seems blindingly obvious that the problem is with the TEST, not an entire race of people. If people of a particular race or races are categorically struggling more at a particular school than people of other races, the problem is with the SCHOOL, not an entire race of people. To believe otherwise is to buy into the lie that race is genetic rather than a social construct. Affirmative action is designed (in part) to address the fact that many people still face structural inequality we have not yet managed to fix, an inequality reflected in our culture, which is then reflected in the choices people who live in that culture make (the people who design the tests and run the schools).
posted by sallybrown at 8:57 AM on December 10, 2015 [38 favorites]

Or two, he's saying that all black people belong in slower schools because they're dumb. Why does Mother Jones' headline imply the second, ridiculous interpretation?

Because we can make reasonable inferences about Scalia's character and preferences from his statements and behavior, and the inference one should arrive at is that he is a man of low character and despicable preferences.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:58 AM on December 10, 2015 [11 favorites]

She's ~25 years old and could have jumped off the train by now.
She's 25. I don't see any reason to infantilize her. She's been an adult all the way through this process.

Legally, maybe. The human brain does not reach full maturity until at least the mid-20s. She got on the train at ~18 and I have no doubt that there is tons of pressure on her to stay the course.

I don't like public shamings at any age, but it's particularly unappealing here. Comments about her intelligence and attractiveness have already shown up on this thread and it's just ugly.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:58 AM on December 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

It's explicitly supposed to let more minority students into universities, on the grounds that admissions officers are (sub)consciously biased against them.

What? No. It's affirmative. It's meant to ameliorate the centuries of racism baked into our institutions.

Your whole middle 'graf is the linked query Scalia made during the argument (and no, reading it in context in the transcript doesn't make it less distasteful), and it's one the University's lawyer notes was rejected by the SCOTUS itself in a previous ruling about admissions at the University of Michigan's Law school (Grutten).

She's 25. I don't see any reason to infantilize her. She's been an adult all the way through this process.

Yeah, presumably she could put a stop to this whole process with a word. Nevertheless, social media pileons are ugly and stupid.
posted by notyou at 9:02 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

She got on the train at ~18 and I have no doubt that there is tons of pressure on her to stay the course.

She's been the public face of this and may be responsible for destroying Affirmative Action.

She may be a pawn, but she's a voluntary pawn. She could get off the train any time she wants to. She could have chosen to disappear or jump ship and written a tell-all.

She's a self-righteous asshole, but she's not a child, and there's no reason to turn her into one.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 9:02 AM on December 10, 2015 [21 favorites]

The human brain does not reach full maturity until at least the mid-20s.

If you really think this is significant, do you also think the voting age, age of consent, drinking age, age to apply for a driver's license, etc., also be adjusted to account for this "lack of maturity" in those under ~25?
posted by aught at 9:03 AM on December 10, 2015 [21 favorites]

I just hate talking about affirmative action. If someone is trying to tell me, "Affirmative action is a bad idea and we should just get rid of it," It turns into an conversation about the problems with it and whether it's still needed and I'm going to disagree and say that we should keep it around.

If, however, someone were to tell me, "Affirmative action is a bad idea but we still need to do something to address racial disparity so I think we should do x, y, z instead," I'd definitely agree (assuming the replacement idea is an improvement).

I feel like we're stuck because there is a group of people, not all of whom are totally racist, that want to get rid of that system entirely and just move on. There is another group of people that recognize that it doesn't work as well (or even work generally) or in the ways it's intended and it should be replaced. Since the latter group is, rightly, worried that if we got rid of affirmative action, the first group wouldn't allow anything to replace it.

It's like I need a spear but I have a shitty pointed stick. I want to toss the stick and get a real spear but some jerk doesn't think I need the spear and wants to take my pointy stick (there aren't any bears around here!). The stick might or might not be better than nothing but I don't care, I've got a white-knuckles death-grip on that stick while I try to face down the bear that's been staring at me with hunger in it's eyes the whole time.
posted by VTX at 9:04 AM on December 10, 2015 [22 favorites]

If you need help understanding why students of color might not be doing as well in college as rich white kids (other than Scalia's argument that it's because they suck) or understanding what colleges could do to be more supportive of all students, we were just discussing that topic over here.
posted by hydropsyche at 9:05 AM on December 10, 2015 [11 favorites]

I don't like public shamings at any age

There is a difference between public shamings and public criticism. She certainly does not deserve comments about her appearance, and comments about her intelligence are only valuable in discussing her academic achievements -- or lack thereof -- in regards to her application for admission being denied.

But to point out that she's in the process of participating in an orchestrated attempt to destroy affirmative action, based on nothing but a sense that somehow she has no need to earn a place in college, but that black people do, and if they have gotten the place rather than her it must be unjust? Well, I don't know. That is shameful, and its invites and deserves criticism.
posted by maxsparber at 9:06 AM on December 10, 2015 [30 favorites]

She got on the train at ~18 and I have no doubt that there is tons of pressure on her to stay the course.

"What is right is not always easy; what is easy is not always right."

Considering the number of conservative wunderkind trotted out in their early teens who have, at her age or earlier, rejected how they were used, I find your argument less than compelling.

I don't like public shamings at any age, but it's particularly unappealing here. Comments about her intelligence and attractiveness have already shown up on this thread and it's just ugly.

None of us have, so you can put the tar brush down, thanks.

And a woman who continues to allow herself to be used to gut affirmative action over $100 deserves a degree of public opprobrium. As people have said, stop infantilizing her - she's an adult, and she should be judged on her actions.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:08 AM on December 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

If you really think this is significant, do you also think the voting age, age of consent, drinking age, age to apply for a driver's license, etc., also be adjusted to account for this "lack of maturity" in those under ~25?

There should absolutely be a progressive sliding scale of rights and responsibilities as people move from childhood to adulthood.
posted by leotrotsky at 9:09 AM on December 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

None of us have, so you can put the tar brush down, thanks.

They've been deleted by the mods, thankfully, but there were absolutely comments.
posted by leotrotsky at 9:10 AM on December 10, 2015 [7 favorites]

You know, I'm entirely okay with acknowledging her adulthood with what she is doing. I'm okay with not having to deal or take seriously every white person complaint about their life being ruined by "something that affects them usually involving minorities/women/etc" because they will end up fine, if not up to the golden standards whiteness promises. My concern is for POC who continually have to struggle to even get themselves heard/seen/educated/not killed. When you have a Supreme Court Justice spouting racist-ass nonsense in the highest court of the land, the feelings of a white girl matter little to me. (You can stuff that judging her appearance nonsense; I'm talking about the harm she is actively perpetrating with this.)
posted by Kitteh at 9:11 AM on December 10, 2015 [8 favorites]

We still need affirmative action because we haven't fixed the problems minorities encounter before they even reach college. If it seems like it isn't a good solution, it's because we're fixing stuff at the end of the line instead of upstream. Like having to individually solder a disconnected wire on every motherboard as it reaches the end of the assembly line. Fix the problems that come earlier and we won't need to apply this messy fix now.
posted by charred husk at 9:12 AM on December 10, 2015 [18 favorites]

of course her intelligence came up. she's saying that people less qualified than her got in because of their race and the school responded by saying that her grades and scores wouldn't have gotten her in regardless. her intelligence, or at least measured scholastic achievements, are central to the case.
posted by nadawi at 9:12 AM on December 10, 2015 [16 favorites]

She's ~25 years old and could have jumped off the train by now.
She's 25. I don't see any reason to infantilize her. She's been an adult all the way through this process.

Legally, maybe. The human brain does not reach full maturity until at least the mid-20s.

And yet, she is the key part -- her name is on the case, after all -- of seeking to deny millions of people the right to attempt to have their human brains reach full maturity in an intellectual environment that might lead to great things. There's plenty of blame to go around, but Abigail Fisher belongs on that list.
posted by Etrigan at 9:13 AM on December 10, 2015 [14 favorites]

My son was denied entrance to UT, even though his father, mother and brother had all gone there. He was forced to seek out an "alternative education." He eventually matriculated at Cornell, and I really don't believe his opportunities, even in Texas, were the worse for it. My point is, if you really deserve to go to UT, you can certainly get into other schools that are just as good. The fact that the best Ms Fisher could do was LSU is hardly UT's fault.
posted by ubiquity at 9:21 AM on December 10, 2015 [11 favorites]

According to Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a neuroscientist with the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, the human brain is not fully developed until people are well into their 30s and 40s.

I rather like the idea that I should have been immune to criticism and not held responsible for my actions until half of my whole life had passed. But, then, maybe nobody under the age of 40 should be allowed to bring a case before the supreme court.
posted by maxsparber at 9:22 AM on December 10, 2015 [11 favorites]

My point is, if you really deserve to go to UT, you can certainly get into other schools that are just as good.

I guess my response to that sentence, having nothing at all to do with race based admissions, is that the problem with that statement, for a white student or a student of color, is that "just as good" schools are often much more expensive, being out of state.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:23 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

"It's explicitly supposed to let more minority students into universities, on the grounds that admissions officers are (sub)consciously biased against them."

What? No. It's affirmative. It's meant to ameliorate the centuries of racism baked into our institutions.

I don't see how these two statements are in tension. "Admissions officers [being] (sub)consciously biased against [minority students]" seems like a part of or result of "centuries of racism baked into our institutions."

The affirmative part means that it involves affirmatively doing something positive rather than refraining from doing harm. Instead of refraining from discriminating against minorities (i.e. not making things worse), affirmative action means actively seeking to redress the imbalance against them (i.e. making things better). Counteracting (sub)conscious bias by favoring diversity (as opposed to merely not disfavoring it) is an example of an affirmative action policy.

Whether that's good, sufficient, or legal are all different questions.
posted by jedicus at 9:30 AM on December 10, 2015

Mod note: One comment deleted - maybe let's let the brain development sidebar rest here?
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:33 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Exploitation, slavery, and institutionalized racism have set up a class of youth to underperform on a more frequent basis. That is pretty hard to fix at the source--we have to continually fight for equality of course, but the legacy of evil will only be cured by time (and rightly used tax money).

Therefore we must do what we can to correct after the fact--we can give back some lost opportunities to the children of the children of the disenfranchised. Maybe there is some way to write a test that allows us to see the potential of a young person in the alternate reality where she was born to a standard privileged legacy? Until then, we have to give a few more the benefit of the doubt.

We are all better for it! The fact that a group is underrepresented so badly means that there are great minds going to waste, and society is missing out on what they could have told us.
posted by TreeRooster at 9:36 AM on December 10, 2015 [11 favorites]

She's being fed a bill of goods while being thrust out in front to be the target of criticism and hatred. The stink of this will likely follow her around for years.

Consider it a life lesson, then. Seems like her critical thinking skills may not be up to snuff for higher education.
posted by Dark Messiah at 9:50 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't see how these two statements are in tension. "Admissions officers [being] (sub)consciously biased against [minority students]" seems like a part of or result of "centuries of racism baked into our institutions."

Counteracting (sub)conscious bias by favoring diversity (as opposed to merely not disfavoring it) is an example of an affirmative action policy.

That's the tension -- the original comment's emphasis on individual bias at the admissions officer level misses the forest for the trees. The "grounds" in support of Affirmative Action are broader and deeper than individual subconscious bias, and missing that leads to the commenter's next 'graf, which discusses the relative merit and preparedness of under-represented students. Of course those students are not well-prepared -- look at the institutional decks stacked against them! We'll need higher-level policy that does more than adjust for individual subconscious bias to correct it.
posted by notyou at 9:52 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

tressiemc: The Great Mismatch - "The painful truth about hand-wringing over whether Affirmative Action “harms” racial minorities is that no one cares if Affirmative Action harms racial minorities. The faux concern for the well-being of poor put-upon non-white students who are promoted beyond their ability never extends to concern for the many more white students who are surely promoted beyond theirs. "
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:52 AM on December 10, 2015 [26 favorites]

Damn, tmotat beat me to it. This is another good bit directly addressing what has essentially been a concern troll made into a court case:

It is true that black and hispanic students report lower levels of satisfaction and belonging at PWIs. That can certainly condition one’s academic performance. It is also true that poorer black and hispanic students are likely to have different levels of academic preparation that can be a “mismatch” for the assumed curriculum exposure embedded in college curricula (with that skewing towards elite universities and away from say open access community colleges). None of these things are about being black or hispanic. It is true for many students and seems to be becoming more true for more students as stratification within and between k-12 schools persists. Black and hispanic students don’t like racist communities and many of these universities are racist. But, non-elite students also tend to not like classist communities and many of these universities are classist. Ask some working class students about how their mismatch impacts their academic performance some time (or read some of that research).

But, of course, the issue here is one about race. It isn’t an issue of race because there is anything inherently flawed with racialized people but because there is something inherently flawed with white supremacy. That’s what affirmative action was about and what it continues to be about.

posted by zombieflanders at 9:57 AM on December 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

The stink of this will likely follow her around for years.

I think you're vastly underestimating how many people's good graces she's in because of this crap.
posted by kmz at 9:59 AM on December 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

While Scalia's comment is what garnered most of the attention from oral argument (for good reason), I found Roberts' line of questioning equally troubling. He stressed that affirmative action was allowed only as a temporary measure. And that either (a) racism is over, so there's no longer a need for AA, or (b) racism hasn't been solved fast enough, so AA won't be "temporary" enough and therefore shouldn't be allowed. I also found Roberts' and Scalia's proposition (starting w/ the "physics class" statement) that the state must prove diversity is a compelling interest on a class-by-class basis to be troubling as well. Enough votes for either point would really change how fundamental rights cases are decided.
posted by melissasaurus at 10:02 AM on December 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

I'm mildly amused that the "diversity is bad for a university" argument is poking its head up, considering what hardcore conservatives believe about diversity as a concept.

Of course, one of Fisher's arguments is also that her UT rejection damaged her career because Texas employers are biased towards UT grads. In other words, these employers prefer to draw from a homogenous, narrowly focused hiring base and disdain reaching outside of that for those from other places and backgrounds.

Why does this all sound so... familiar...
posted by delfin at 10:02 AM on December 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

That's been one of Roberts' defining characteristics ever since he made his bones as Reagan's VRA hatchetman.

We really need to amend some rules regarding recusal into the Constitution, because Roberts, Thomas, et al. have shown that they won't do it on their own.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:07 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

There is a difference between public shamings and public criticism. She certainly does not deserve comments about her appearance, and comments about her intelligence are only valuable in discussing her academic achievements -- or lack thereof -- in regards to her application for admission being denied.

But to point out that she's in the process of participating in an orchestrated attempt to destroy affirmative action, based on nothing but a sense that somehow she has no need to earn a place in college, but that black people do, and if they have gotten the place rather than her it must be unjust? Well, I don't know. That is shameful, and its invites and deserves criticism.

I agree with this completely.

I'm not saying that her actions are exempt from criticism, but that I have serious problems with the tone and content of some of those ostensible critiques
posted by leotrotsky at 10:10 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Roberts: "What unique perspective does a minority student bring to a physics class?" (asked of Gregory Garre, the attorney representing the University of Texas)

Oh, oh, teacher, teacher, I know the answer to this one! Call on me! Call on me!

"Each person brings a unique perspective to an intellectual endeavor. Because, you know, they're individuals and not just members of a socially constructed class."

What astounds me is that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in 2015 doesn't know this.
posted by Mental Wimp at 10:12 AM on December 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

He stressed that affirmative action was allowed only as a temporary measure.

This is what Roberts argued in Shelby County, too. (Under the Voting Rights Act, some states and counties had to get "preclearance" from the Justice Department and a three judge Federal panel that their voting laws and practices did not unfairly limit minority participation in an election. Part of that process relied on a statistical formula to determine which jurisdictions needed to gain pre-clearance. Roberts argued that the formula was 40 years old, and thus out of date, but if Congress created a new formula, then preclearance could resume. Previously.)
posted by notyou at 10:16 AM on December 10, 2015

John Roberts: “What ‘unique perspective’ does a minority student bring to a physics class?”

Science is, in theory, race-blind, but scientists certainly are not. Whether a minority student will bring anything special to the class is one question, whether a minority practitioner (who had to be a student first) will bring to the discipline? Probably, a different set of questions.

If this was 1900, Roberts would be arguing : “What ‘unique perspective’ does a Jewish student bring to a physics class?” One answer, of course, would be "Einstein's answers."
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:21 AM on December 10, 2015 [26 favorites]

Regarding

I have never before heard the rationale that affirmative action is intended to "challenge white upper/upper-middle-class students, resulting in their getting better." It's explicitly supposed to let more minority students into universities, on the grounds that admissions officers are (sub)consciously biased against them.

and

It's meant to ameliorate the centuries of racism baked into our institutions.

whatever the historical reasons for the development of affirmative action policies and whatever the reasons that people may still have for supporting (or opposing) their use, the only constitutional rationale recognized in recent Supreme Court decisions (Grutter and the previous Fisher) is "the [...] school's narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body" (O'Connor from the Grutter decision, emphasis added), and not addressing prior discrimination or structural inequality.
posted by oakroom at 10:24 AM on December 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

If this was 1900, Roberts would be arguing : “What ‘unique perspective’ does a Jewish student bring to a physics class?” One answer, of course, would be "Einstein's answers."



This problem with this argument is that it favors all type of diversity that can have a beneficial educational outcome and makes affirmative action policies instruments for making the student body diverse on a number of axis' (and consequently, that all educational bodies should strive for diversity on all types of relevant axis'). To be sure, these are good things--but if they weren't, affirmative action would still be a good thing because, to me at least, the primary purpose of it is to right wrongs and level the playing field for those who have suffered from systemic racial discrimination. I dunno, I guess that argument sounds kind of like, "white people will benefit too!" which is a nice bonus but not really the point.

On preview, oakroom's point is basically that the above argument has to be made for legal reasons.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 10:36 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'd say that oakroom's point is that we need better justices on the Court. I'm a bit tired of rulings coming down to which side of the bed Kennedy got up on that day.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:40 AM on December 10, 2015 [6 favorites]

I guess I feel sorry that people are using her as the hashtag, and making the situation little vindictive. Fisher obviously feels she had a legal issue, and the Supreme Court, by granting cert, twice, agrees with her. I don't think it does anyone any good to be like #staymad.

Why should people feel the need to be nice to her? She has been actively working to dismantle the only tool for correcting gender/racial disparity in higher education that presently exists.

Also, I find #staymad kind of refreshing. I've found when Affirmative Action comes up on campus, some white students have no compunction in questioning the academic chops of their their POC friends. Instead of acting as one when expect when being insulted to your face, POCs often swallow their anger and pride to respond gracefully. We have to be polite to avoid being labeled as angry or bitter.#staymad makes a nice change there's no swallowing of pride happening there.
posted by CatastropheWaitress at 10:43 AM on December 10, 2015 [17 favorites]

I would say Scalia is a garbage person, but a friend pointed out that this was being unfair to garbage.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 10:45 AM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

These rules also get used to actively discriminate against asian American students. It's just racism plain and simple which is why it's illegal in California. My half asian daughter does not have an asian first name because we don't want her locked out of universities elsewhere that try to make sure they don't have "too many" asian americans.
posted by w0mbat at 10:47 AM on December 10, 2015

This use of #StayMadAbby sums it all up.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:56 AM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

I just don't see the reason to vilify Fisher. Yes, I think she is in the wrong. But she was denied something very specific and quantifiable from her state government that she feels she deserves, and feels very aggrieved about it. Her argument is more or less reasonable and her motivation is understandable. Much of the purpose of the court system is to hear people's grievances against the government and resolve them. The fact that the court system is about to make a horrible policy decision that will hurt millions of people across the country is the court system's problem, not hers.
posted by miyabo at 10:58 AM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

Mod note: A couple of comments deleted. Both points of view on whether/how it's ok to criticize Fisher personally have been made upthread, at this point please let's drop it rather than going in increasingly-angry circles about it.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:11 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Her argument is more or less reasonable and her motivation is understandable.

"I want it" and "but I deserved it" is not reasonable. She has failed to prove that she did not get into the college because of race, and so all we're seeing is the tantrum of privilege asserting itself at the highest level.
posted by maxsparber at 11:14 AM on December 10, 2015 [16 favorites]

This use of #StayMadAbby sums it all up.

Ugh, sorry, I find that horrible. We have no idea how hard she tried, and we should never discourage anyone from pursuing legal action when they think something is discriminatory. No matter if they are on the bad side of history or not.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:15 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Study: Scalia better off in less advanced court.
posted by lord_wolf at 11:20 AM on December 10, 2015 [17 favorites]

we should never discourage anyone from pursuing legal action when they think something is discriminatory.

I think the world will be fine if white people don't pursue legal action because they think minorities have more advantages than they do. I actually think this should be discouraged.
posted by maxsparber at 11:25 AM on December 10, 2015 [27 favorites]

people who claim discrimination to try to further actual discrimination shouldn't be shielded from criticism or mockery.
posted by nadawi at 11:25 AM on December 10, 2015 [20 favorites]

I think the world will be fine if white people don't pursue legal action because they think minorities have more advantages than they do. I actually think this should be discouraged.

But that's unconstitutional. Let them get dismissed.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:27 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

There's nothing unconstitutional about telling someone they have had a bad idea and should think about it rather than drag it into the courts.
posted by maxsparber at 11:29 AM on December 10, 2015 [13 favorites]

OK, I agree to disagree with you.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:30 AM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

in a perfect world leaving it up to the courts would be a fine remedy, but in our white supremacist culture (that has a nasty history of protecting white women at the severe detriment to minorities) it behooves us white people to recognize the system we're embroiled in and attempt to do less harm.
posted by nadawi at 11:31 AM on December 10, 2015 [15 favorites]

Don't mock Abby Fisher for her appearance or gender. Do mock her for willingly becoming a figurehead for American racism rather than accept that maybe it's okay that she didn't get something she wanted.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:31 AM on December 10, 2015 [22 favorites]

Did the University of Texas actually offer evidence that African American students with Fisher's academic qualification were generally rejected? If so I don't even see how she has standing to bring this case. Weird.
posted by MattD at 11:42 AM on December 10, 2015

Look, I live in Texas, and being a UT (Austin; there are several other UT's one can go to!) grad does not automagically make your career sparkle. UT Austin is a HUGE school, they churn out tons of grads, many of whom still struggle to get jobs or succeed despite having that degree on their resume.

There are many other good state schools here. Also out of state. She did not suffer a serious harm by not getting in to UT Austin. If she fails at life from here on, it's on her, not that particular university.
posted by emjaybee at 11:46 AM on December 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

I'm trying to think of a joke involving Fisher and staying salty but the best I can come up with is #SaltCod.
posted by Slackermagee at 11:48 AM on December 10, 2015

It's true that the university, for whatever reason, offered provisional admission to some students with lower test scores and grades than Fisher. Five of those students were black or Latino. Forty-two were white.

Neither Fisher nor Blum mentioned those 42 applicants in interviews. Nor did they acknowledge the 168 black and Latino students with grades as good as or better than Fisher's who were also denied entry into the university that year. Also left unsaid is the fact that Fisher turned down a standard UT offer under which she could have gone to the university her sophomore year if she earned a 3.2 GPA at another Texas university school in her freshman year.

posted by kmz at 11:49 AM on December 10, 2015 [27 favorites]

Also left unsaid is the fact that Fisher turned down a standard UT offer under which she could have gone to the university her sophomore year if she earned a 3.2 GPA at another Texas university school in her freshman year.

Because that's irrelevant to the case. Actually, all of those things you posted are.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:52 AM on December 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

The fact that students of color with her academics also didn't get accepted is extremely relevant. It undermines her special snowflake status argument.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:55 AM on December 10, 2015 [19 favorites]

Forty-two were white.

Neither Fisher nor Blum mentioned those 42 applicants in interviews.

The central unspoken tenet of modern American conservatism: It's better for 99 people to need something and not get it than for 1 to not need it and get it. They at least used to be more like 9-to-1, but things have gotten vicious.
posted by Etrigan at 11:58 AM on December 10, 2015 [6 favorites]

OK, so that's really getting stuck in my craw now. Its irrelevant to the case in the ways that the system, the incredibly racist system this policy is attempting to ameliorate the effects of, has decided it to be. X generations of case law that set this up. I get it. I'm sure that most people here get that.

Its incredible bullshit that a 200 and change year old document is the only thing deciding what has bearing on this case after 200 and change years worth of damage. They're human judges, not robots, and it would be nice if they were to act like it and not vomit "invalid string" all over tricky cases. Like these are simple issues that will fit nicely into pre-assigned sections that can be argued from. They're the last stage in this climate of political gridlock. Maybe Roberts and Thomas Scalito could parse that before making matters worse, again.
posted by Slackermagee at 12:01 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

our white supremacist culture (that has a nasty history of protecting white women at the severe detriment to minorities)

Claiming to protect, not protecting. White women are depicted as delicate flowers in need of protection (see, e.g., the antebellum and post-Reconstruction South), but they've rarely been aided by the policy changes that have been advanced in their name.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 12:01 PM on December 10, 2015 [14 favorites]

Those points are germane to Fisher's standing to sue over affirmative action in UT's admissions process. In order to bring suit she has to prove she was injured by the application of that program. If minority students with grades as good as or better than Fisher's were also denied admission, it undermines her claim that she would have been admitted but for her race -- and if she wouldn't have been admitted as a racial minority, she has no claim. Goodbye lawsuit, no matter how much Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts hate affirmative action.

Likewise, she's claiming as one of the injuries suffered by her denial of admission that it hurt her job prospects in staying close to home because Texas employers prefer University of Texas graduates. If the offer she got from UT included an eventual UT diploma, that's not so much of an injury.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:02 PM on December 10, 2015 [9 favorites]

steady-state strawberry - that is a fantastic point.
posted by nadawi at 12:03 PM on December 10, 2015

it's also a germane point here, since if she should get her wish it'll actually be harmful to white women since we're generally helped greatly by affirmative action.
posted by nadawi at 12:04 PM on December 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

She does have the right to pursue legal action, as she clearly continues to think that this is discriminatory. And others have the right to mock her based on the evidence that she is doing so strictly out of spite.

What else does she have to gain at this point? She's seeking to have admittance criteria that denied her entry replaced by strictly colorblind admittance criteria that would also have denied her entry. She cannot go back and replay her college career as a newly vindicated 2008 UTA admittee, and despite her claim of financial harm she is not seeking meaningful financial compensation. So if she cannot demonstrate that her proposed remedy would have changed her grievance, nor demonstrate either a willingness to continue to pursue her desired outcome nor measurable damage from not achieving it... why is she there?

(Because a conservative think tank is in her ear and telling her what she wants to hear.)
posted by delfin at 12:05 PM on December 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

It gets a bit tedious watching people argue about whether or not Abby Fisher should be "shamed" for not being "good enough" to get into the University of Texas when the whole argument rests on an incredibly dubious proposition in the first place.

Abby Fisher almost certainly was good enough to get into UT. Many, many people are. That's the whole point. The argument in this thread makes the same common assumption that many people make (apparently including Antonin Scalia) - that students applying to attend a university are on an easy-to-identify curve, that ranking them in order is a process so simple as to be automatic.

That is not how academic admissions works. It is impossible to place twenty thousand applicants in an exact and simple ranking - literally impossible. The only thing a university can do is place students in pools - this pile of a thousand applications is from students who got 4390-5400 on their SAT, that pile of a thousand applications is from students who have a GPA of 4.0 or above, the other pile is students with what we've feebly classed as "good extracurricular standings." You set your benchmarks, and then at best you're left with about twice as many applicants as you need. The only way to make the final decision is somewhat arbitrarily - it would be silly to do it based on alphabetical order of names, but not unheard of frankly. You're not talking about being able to sift through a little stack of applications and decide you like the cut of a particular student's jib - and what's more you have to try to avoid the old trap: picking people based on having met and liked them (which is quite often a reinforcement of privilege and class). Random selection is pretty much the only way to go.

So let's be clear: affirmative action is absolutely not about privileging non-white students by ranking them higher than white students who are academically better than them. Affirmative action is about taking a situation where a pool of students is academically identical and saying: "if the qualifications of this pool of students are all pretty much the same, let's make sure we pick a few non-white kids, just to even things out a bit."

That's what people are misunderstanding about affirmative action, I think. It's not about imposing any privilege of academic rank on anybody, or pushing anyone to the front of the line when they ought to be at the back of the line. It never results in lower-scoring non-whites doing better than better-scoring whites. It only ever results in an evening of the proportions within groups of students with exactly the same scores.
posted by koeselitz at 12:09 PM on December 10, 2015 [43 favorites]

John Roberts: “What ‘unique perspective’ does a minority student bring to a physics class?”

Ugh, what a ridiculous question. First off, physics is an obviously cherry-picked hypothetical. What unique perspective does a minority student bring to an American history class? Secondly, why is the non-minority perspective automatically unique? If it is, then hello privilege, and if it's not, then why are minorities being held to this higher standard, of having to not only show up to physics class but also bring some "unique" perspective? The idea that AA is only acceptable insofar as it encourages diversity is in itself racist, because it presupposes that a minority student's only value to the university is to act as some kind of diversity-boosting prop. I don't understand what's so hard to grasp about the idea that minority students are underrepresented proportionally and something special has to be done to ameliorate that problem because our culture and institutions have (semi-)hidden racial biases that are difficult to correct for. Affirmative Action may not be a perfect system but it's at least a step in the right direction.
posted by axiom at 12:10 PM on December 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

Koeslitz it is certainly impossible to admit students on a strictly numeric basis.

For 20+ years Berkeley and UCLA (nothing to sniff at) ran their admissions essentially like this: (a) athletes and a very small number of special cases plus (b) all African American and Hispanic students whose GPAs and SATs put them over a qualification cut-off plus (c) white and Asian applicants in descending order of GPA and SAT, until the class was full.
posted by MattD at 12:20 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Likewise, she's claiming as one of the injuries suffered by her denial of admission that it hurt her job prospects in staying close to home because Texas employers prefer University of Texas graduates.

She must really hate folks like me, who graduated from UT yet have never even looked for a job in Texas. What a waste of a perfectly good diploma. On the other hand, my brother got a job in Texas with his Ga. Tech diploma, so maybe we cancel each other out

Between this and all the open carry nonsense going on there my alma mater is really becoming a target for bad ideas.
posted by TedW at 12:21 PM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

It never results in lower-scoring non-whites doing better than better-scoring whites. It only ever results in an evening of the proportions within groups of students with exactly the same scores.

That's just not true. Just look up the admissions grid the University of Michigan used (which was presented in the Grutter v. Bollinger case). Of course, evidence also shows that race-based admissions do not in fact harm white applicants because universities are instead holding Asian-American applicants to higher standards than even white applicants.
posted by gyc at 12:31 PM on December 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

My biggest issue with affirmative action is how it pretends to fix things that can't be fixed.

No, it doesn't, any more than any other single program aimed at ameliorating centuries of piles of broken components of America "pretends" to. What it does is provide a slight leg up for some small number of people who were disadvantaged by the system and its predecessors.

It's only people who desperately want to say "See, racism is fixed! We can stop worrying about it now!" who claim that it's a failure or can ever only be a failure.
posted by Etrigan at 12:33 PM on December 10, 2015 [13 favorites]

It greatly reduces the ability of people of color to signal their educational accomplishments, because getting into school X means one thing for white people, and another thing for (some) people of color.

Someone who would discount a person of color's resume or accomplishments for this reason is just using affirmative action as the excuse for exercising virulently racist beliefs. Take away affirmative action and the person would find another excuse to discriminate against candidates of color.
posted by sallybrown at 12:34 PM on December 10, 2015 [14 favorites]

It greatly reduces the ability of people of color to signal their educational accomplishments, because getting into school X means one thing for white people, and another thing for (some) people of color.

See, what always gets me about that is that even if you do believe they get in unfairly they graduate the same way so obviously they were cut out for it.
posted by Drinky Die at 12:38 PM on December 10, 2015 [8 favorites]

This is of course a good thing, but if it turns out that many of the admitted minority students were not equal to their peers except for race, and are struggling to do as well as the upper-class/white people, then what is to be done? Should we have more programs to tutor and guide lower-class/minority students, hoping that we can undo 18 years of inferior schooling and opportunity? Should we start admitting them to less challenging but still good schools? It harms everyone, of all races, to deny that a problem exists and say that those who point it out "deserve an ‘F’ for their race-baiting."

So it's really weird to me the way you start this paragraph acknowledging that you don't actually know if "a problem exists" and then end the paragraph assuming that it does. That's not even to mention your unthinking acceptance of Scalia's framing that affirmative action explicitly prescribes the admission of unqualified candidates even though the federal regulations explicitly state that the selection criteria should not be interpreted to require the selection of unqualified candidates in any circumstance. It's not necessarily the immediate textual content of the discourse on this topic that's race-baiting, but the assumptions that underly it, which you've incidentally demonstrated handily.
posted by invitapriore at 12:38 PM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

It also masks problems with the school system (we let them into college, if they fail, well, we gave them the chance--never mind that they graduated high school barely able to read).

Incidentally, in light of those same federal regulations governing affirmative action, this is not even wrong.
posted by invitapriore at 12:39 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

After all, it's not like a white person's diploma is necessarily a sign that she earned admission free and clear of any influence. Nobody looks at my college diploma and thinks "oh man, she only got in because of her legacy status" -- because they never think to ask.
posted by sallybrown at 12:40 PM on December 10, 2015 [18 favorites]

gyc: "That's just not true. Just look up the admissions grid the University of Michigan used (which was presented in the Grutter v. Bollinger case). Of course, evidence also shows that race-based admissions do not in fact harm white applicants because universities are instead holding Asian-American applicants to higher standards than even white applicants."

Okay, I will accept that there are a number of different affirmative action schemes out there, and not all fit what I said. But what I said is true of most admissions departments I know of - and the majority of colleges in the US, I would guess - and, more to the point, is true of the University of Texas. Under UT's system, it simply isn't possible for a person of color of a lower academic rank to get placed ahead of a white person of a higher academic rank.

internet fraud detective squad: "It greatly reduces the ability of people of color to signal their educational accomplishments, because getting into school X means one thing for white people, and another thing for (some) people of color."

In this case, as I've said, that is not how affirmative action works. Any non-white student can hold their head up high knowing that in purely academic terms they achieved as much as (or more than) their white compatriots.

But what you say is true - in the sense that, since most people are wrong about affirmative action and don't understand college admissions, the common misperceptions people have and the assumptions they make are likely to make it harder for them to stand on their accomplishments. I'm not sure there's an easy way to fix that, though.
posted by koeselitz at 12:43 PM on December 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

Koeselitz, I wish I could favorite your comments a thousand times and then get them on the front page of the NYT.
Every year, the admissions process is hellish. So many intelligent, hopeful and ambitious young people, and so few places. We are going to cut down on acceptances in 2016, and it will be worse.
Usually, I openly say that among those top 10% who are equally qualified, and of which we are only allowed to accept a third (which gives something like a 3-4% succes-ratio for the applicants), we try to create a mix of competencies and social and cultural backgrounds as well as gender (we don't officially have AA).
Every year, I have phone calls from desperate students, and to be honest, every year we (the admissions committee) make mistakes, because it is really hard to see through the material. We are an art school, so we have even less objective criteria to work with than normal.
At some point, we realized that people were literally fabricating and selling applications! So we had to do more interviews - at the cost of less time for teaching.

The big thing that many commenters above don't seem to realize is, that the different tests and essays and extra-curricular activities we evaluate are not a perfect tool for determining a students' ability to enter higher education. And that the system is biased towards privilege. What's worse is, that with the current emphasis on a very primitive understanding of knowledge in the primary and secondary school systems, the usefulness of tests and SAT scores are declining rapidly while the university administrations, in their quest for transparency, are valuing them ever higher.

Generally, students from privileged areas and more well-off families will score higher on tests for reasons well described in research across the globe. They will also have wonderful relevant internships (paid for by their parents) and great summer-academy portfolios. This only partly correlates with later academic achievement.

Last year there was a really strange case, which I still don't really understand, in which an international student who was from all other points of view the best of all applicants was rejected because his TOEFL test was bad. He wrote us in perfect English, called us in perfect English, and finally came personally to talk with admin in perfect English. I don't know why his test was bad, I do know we have many students who hardly speak English who are admitted. But he was a strange example of how the test scores are not at all the best way to find the right students.
posted by mumimor at 12:51 PM on December 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

Is the SCOTUSBlog coverage linked here? I don't see it. It's a great resource. I think they do a good job of writing for nonlawyers, but I'm a lawyer who follows this stuff as part of my job so I could be wrong.

Mark Walsh was at the argument and wrote about how the justices behaved here.

On the Media also had a good story on how Ms Fisher was chosen as plaintiff for this case; the whole episode is good.
posted by crush-onastick at 1:08 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

I always compare AA to the admission standards at the University of Virginia when I went there. It was entirely possible for them to fill the entire admissions class with extremely well qualified applicants from Northern Virginia, or even Fairfax County alone. And in fact, if they went purely by scores and grades, the entry class would have been nearly that every year. But since it was the U of *Virginia* they went to considerable lengths to admit people like my freshman roommate, a (white) woman from a wide spot in the road in SW Virginia. But no one ever went into hysterics and tried to sue about being denied a spot because of *her*.
posted by tavella at 1:28 PM on December 10, 2015 [6 favorites]

mumimor, couldn't they give him a conditional based on a follow up test held on campus, or deferred to the following semester?
posted by infini at 1:36 PM on December 10, 2015

But since it was the U of *Virginia* they went to considerable lengths to admit people like my freshman roommate, a (white) woman from a wide spot in the road in SW Virginia. But no one ever went into hysterics and tried to sue about being denied a spot because of *her*.

Michigan does something similar with the Upper Peninsula, and yet you never hear cries of "damn Yoopers took my spot!"
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:40 PM on December 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

I do understand that argument, but it's not the court's place to weigh the costs and benefits of affirmative action. The court should decide whether or not affirmative action is legal by interpreting the US constitution and federal laws. The other branches of government -- legislators, and in this case the university's board -- should decide whether implementing the policy is beneficial.
posted by miyabo at 1:51 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Similarly, if a school has affirmative action policies, it reduces the amount that you can assume about a person of color based on the fact that they got into that school.One of the major values of going to certain colleges/universities is their value as signals about your intelligence and your accomplishments. So if people of color can't effectively use that signal, the value of attending "better" schools is lessened for them, regardless of whether they benefitted from affirmative action or not.

Except, as has been explained, affirmative action is not the promotion of unqualified candidates over qualified ones, but considering the choice of qualified candidates based on the benefits of a diverse body of people.

If you feel that affirmative action diminishes the accomplishments of minority individuals, I would argue that the issue lies with your perceptions, not with affirmative action, and as such it is your problem to correct.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:58 PM on December 10, 2015 [7 favorites]

Similarly, if a school has affirmative action policies, it reduces the amount that you can assume about a person of color based on the fact that they got into that school.

Yes...if you're already looking for reasons to hold the person in lower esteem than they deserve to be held in.

I'm a black male who spent most of his youth below the poverty line, and I graduated from Harvard way back in [redacted cuz, damn, it was a long time ago!]. After graduating, I moved to Austin to attend UT, and I've lived in the ATX ever since then. If anything, the overwhelming majority of people I have met since graduating, in social and professional contexts, assign me too much credit for having attended Harvard. As a result, I'm usually very reluctant to mention where I got my undergraduate degree.

The exceptions -- and thank dog I've encountered few such people -- are those who are already inclined to dislike me and act in a bigoted way toward me. They're the ones who sniff and sneer and assume AA must explain how I got in and graduated. Everybody else, I damn near have to stop them from dropping to one knee and offering to kiss my ring. (Wolf ring, not a class ring.)
posted by lord_wolf at 2:07 PM on December 10, 2015 [26 favorites]

mumimor, couldn't they give him a conditional based on a follow up test held on campus, or deferred to the following semester?
posted by infini

I asked them about that, because we did that the year before. My understanding was that they were in such a panic about the rising numbers of applications, they'd do anything to cull the flock. Very frustrating from my academic pov.
posted by mumimor at 2:11 PM on December 10, 2015

For all the decades old conservative complaints about judicial activism in the Supreme Court, no previous Supreme Court can match the Roberts court for its ongoing projects to dismantle affirmative action, campaign financing and the Voting Rights Act. All of which horrify and sicken me.

For all the stigma and stain the legacy of the original sin of slavery has left on this country, I can not imagine where we would be were it not for affirmative action in education and employment. And yet these fools are hell bent on destroying it.

I keep saying it over and over -- way back in the day in the 60s, my gloomiest and most hopeless forbodings of how awful things could get could not hold a candle to the way things have turned out. It just appalls me. I never ever thought it would get this bad
posted by y2karl at 2:37 PM on December 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

If AA is in the least bit responsible for black students at UT not being able to wave their accomplishments proudly, there is 0 evidencenof that on the #StayMadAbby hashtag.

The tone is rather "Fuck you, I earned this degree Im holding up in my graduation robes surrounded by my family. You should have studied harder."

And on that graduation day, zero fucks were given.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 2:41 PM on December 10, 2015 [13 favorites]

I² Debate: The equal protection clause forbids racial preferences in state university admissions.
posted by pwnguin at 4:21 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

If people of a particular race or races are categorically doing worse on some particular test or metric that people have created, it seems blindingly obvious that the problem is with the TEST, not an entire race of people.

Scores are not categorically different by race - the averages are different - and you do realize that such a difference might reflect things that are actually, meaningfully wrong but can/should be improved (just an example) rather than "genetic inferiority" or whatever? I cannot be on board with the attitude that a metric must be wrong if the results don't match one's preconceived notions, and I don't think it helps make the world a more just place.
posted by atoxyl at 4:23 PM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

Yeah, but I can be on board with the idea that standardised testing in the United States is corrupt enough to be worse than useless, though I accept that admissions offices are adrift at sea without them.
posted by koeselitz at 4:37 PM on December 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

About the actually topic:

Anecdotally I definitely seen people admitted to fancy schools from underprivileged backgrounds have a really hard time, and lack of preparation probably has something to do with it. But then a lack of ongoing support from... almost anybody also likely has a lot to do with it, which is to say the school could have done much more for these people if it actually wanted to.

I'm going to stay away from the legal debate over whether public schools are allowed to practice affirmative action, but I definitely endorse the argument that it's in the interest of institutions for many reasons to have as diverse a set of members as possible if they are in fact able to take steps to achieve this goal.
posted by atoxyl at 4:39 PM on December 10, 2015

Every single top tier institution is packed with kids who do not deserve to be there based on academics.

YES

In fact, students are admitted to selective universities based on many considerations that have nothing to do with test scores or grades — such as their athletic record, their extracurricular activities, their enthusiasm about the school, whether their parents or grandparents attended the school, known as “legacy,” and any of their character traits that the university believes exemplifies the kind of student they want on campus.

After limitations were placed on race conscious affirmative action in cases such as the 1978 Regents of The University of California v. Bakke case and 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger case, race is allowed to be considered as one of many factors in a holistic review. It seems a bit insincere to argue that although these other factors are acceptable as part of the larger decision making process — including legacy admissions, which perpetuates class inequality — race is not.

7 Criticisms Of Affirmative Action That Have Been Thoroughly Disproved
posted by triggerfinger at 5:47 PM on December 10, 2015 [10 favorites]

But other factors make people less able to assume what your accomplishments were. I personally think that someone who got into Harvard is likely to be very impressive. But if I know both their parents went there and donate money, I realize that I can't assume as much about their accomplishments just based on the fact that they went to Harvard, because there are other factors. Similarly, if a school has affirmative action policies, it reduces the amount that you can assume about a person of color based on the fact that they got into that school.One of the major values of going to certain colleges/universities is their value as signals about your intelligence and your accomplishments. So if people of color can't effectively use that signal, the value of attending "better" schools is lessened for them, regardless of whether they benefitted from affirmative action or not.

Many things about this comment bother me but perhaps it comes down to a difference in what we value. First of all, why does it matter if a POC benefitted from affirmative action to get into fancy school if the outcome is that they did well and graduated. They proved that they deserved to be there, no?

I also don't understand being impressed by the fact that someone graduated from big name school. It reeks of snobbery to me. And saying that ones assumptions may be diminished by the reveal of how they got into that college is concerning too. I mean, if your estimation is diluted by your assumptions perhaps you should assume less often? It is demeaning. I guess the irony here is that I am assuming a lot about you from your comment...
posted by futz at 5:58 PM on December 10, 2015 [10 favorites]

If this was 1900, Roberts would be arguing : “What ‘unique perspective’ does a Jewish student bring to a physics class?” One answer, of course, would be "Einstein's answers."

You can't just bring up Einstein like that! Invoking Einstein was banned worldwide under the second Godwin Nonproliferation Treaty after people said that abortion, Ritalin and the Common Core were wrong because something something hypothetical Einstein. The fallout from their smug chain emails still lingers on as mutant copypasta. Why, if Einstein had been exposed to that kind of talk as a young lad, he very well might hav

- THIS USER HAS BEEN QUARANTINED FOR PUBLIC SAFETY -
posted by knuckle tattoos at 7:49 PM on December 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

It also masks problems with the school system (we let them into college, if they fail, well, we gave them the chance--never mind that they graduated high school barely able to read). So does affirmative action actually help?

A person that is "barely able to read" is not going to get into any/most "top notch" (or mid-notch) schools to begin with, Caucasian or otherwise. Affirmative Action doesn't work like that.
posted by futz at 10:25 PM on December 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

A University of Texas at Austin professor on "What minority students bring to my physics classes."
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 5:50 AM on December 11, 2015 [7 favorites]

That's what people are misunderstanding about affirmative action, I think. It's not about imposing any privilege of academic rank on anybody, or pushing anyone to the front of the line when they ought to be at the back of the line. It never results in lower-scoring non-whites doing better than better-scoring whites. It only ever results in an evening of the proportions within groups of students with exactly the same scores.

This is just false for selective schools. In this forthcoming paper the authors review whether affirmative action actually makes its putative beneficiaries better off. In reviewing the evidence about affirmative action, they are clear that at top schools,

"Racial preferences result in substantial differences in academic backgrounds between majority and minority enrollees. Using the College and Beyond data set, which focuses on a set of highly-selective colleges, Arcidiacono, Khan, and Vigdor (2011) show within-school SAT score gaps of at least 140 points."

See also Figure 3, showing the differences on an "academic preparedness" index (a composite of grades and SAT) between minority and white admitted students at U.C. Berkeley (pre-209). The difference between white and minority students is about 1 standard deviation.
posted by myeviltwin at 8:17 AM on December 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yes, minority students tend to be less academically prepared on average than white students, thanks to the legacy of racism and the forcible extraction of wealth from their communities.

The question is whether we allow that to the used as an excuse to further exclude them from the levers of power, or do we push these institutions (which, may I remind you, have been involved in the aforementioned wealth extraction) to work at reversing the damage done?
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:40 AM on December 11, 2015

From the paper (co-authored by an opponent and a proponent of the "mismatch" hypothesis) it seems that whether affirmative action in higher ed actually helps its intended beneficiaries is very much an open question.
posted by myeviltwin at 8:50 AM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

i realised i have something vaguely useful to contribute:

i got into an "elite" institution through a program that supported merit, presumably in a attempt to change the balance of power in such places (even if "only" through social standing, rather than race). it really made little difference. it was obvious who the elite were, and who the smart people were. the smart people kept their heads down and got technical-ish jobs. the elite went on to run the country.

even if you get in, you don't have the right accent, the right friends, the right interests.
posted by andrewcooke at 9:00 AM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

> I do feel like it diminishes the perception of the accomplishments of minority individuals.

No matter how much you're against the concept of affirmative action, it only relates to students getting into the school. In your own words, even: "it reduces the amount that you can assume about a person of color based on the fact that they got into that school."

But there aren't any affirmative action programs that propel these students through multiple years of coursework that culminate in a degree from said school. That's truly an accomplishment of their own doing. The point has been made earlier in the thread, but I wish you would have been more accurate in saying it diminishes your perception of their accomplishments rather than generalizing and projecting your psychology on the presumed interpretations from others.

> White people benefit from higher-education signals more than POC do because of the idea that getting into a given school signals something different (and more valuable) for a white person than it does for a POC.

It could just as easily be argued that people of color benefit more from higher-education signals because it indicates they've triumphed over the standard educational obstacles in addition to the societal obstacles that would have normally prevented them from entering the realm of higher education in the first place.
posted by Johann Georg Faust at 10:30 AM on December 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

This paper finds that a greater percentage of minority applicants accepted offers from the top UCs after Prop 209. The authors suggest that this preference might be in part because a degree from these schools has a higher signal value (and thus greater value to minority applicants) post-affirmative action.
posted by myeviltwin at 11:51 AM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

Reuters discovers that the fellow (and stockbroker) bankrolling this lawsuit searched for three years to find a white student who was rejected dispite 'solid' scores.

In 2012. Assume its the same guy still.
posted by softlord at 12:18 PM on December 11, 2015 [6 favorites]

> My point has nothing to do with whether a given person can do the coursework and graduate. Them graduating is a different signal. I am talking about what a given student being admitted to a given school says about their accomplishments up to that point. That is where a substantial amount of the value of signaling comes from. (Underrepresented) POC don’t get the same value as white people out of that signaling.

And that's the source of contention. "I go to Harvard" and "I graduated from Harvard" are very different signals. (By the way, I haven't been participating in this discussion with you outside of your comment about perceived diminished accomplishments, so please avoid the temptation to put words into others' mouths or play the reactionary "piled-on" card when you're making ten recent comments on an asynchronous message board that invites miscommunication.)

I don't think anyone is denying that a person of color saying "I go to [prestigious school]" doesn't invite prejudiced thoughts of "Yeah, but how'd you get in?" The argument I'm making in this case is that graduation is a much more significant signal in the world at-large than admission is. In fact, one of Fisher's primary grievances is that she didn't get a degree from UT, hurting her career prospects. But aside from that, most students' accomplishments prior to being admitted pale in comparison to the accomplishment of graduation and the effect it has on the remainder of their lives.


> Or it could indicate that they didn't have to face those obstacles, despite them being "standard."

The standard educational obstacles I'm referring to are things like coursework. If they aren't facing those obstacles, that's an indictment of the faculty and the school (or the prestige assigned to it). But that's not an argument I'm here to make one way or the other.
posted by Johann Georg Faust at 12:46 PM on December 11, 2015

And that's the source of contention. "I go to Harvard" and "I graduated from Harvard" are very different signals. [...] The argument I'm making in this case is that graduation is a much more significant signal in the world at-large than admission is.

Pretty sure this is not the case. Many schools, especially the elite places, are much harder to get into than to get out of. Harvard has a total graduation rate of 97.5%, for example. This is partly because those schools target graduation rates as a success metric, and try very hard to make their students graduate. It is also the result of cumulative grade inflation. You generally can't flunk out by getting B's. Most of the big-name private institutions in the US are places where it is not difficult, from an academic point of view, to finish some degree.

This is less so for the good but not elite schools, I think, and there may be exceptions among the elite. But if the example is Harvard, it is a much stronger signal to get into Harvard than to finish your degree at Harvard.
posted by grobstein at 1:06 PM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

"I go to Harvard" and "I graduated from Harvard" are very different signals.

Just one data point here: but no, these are not separate signals for me in any way, nor have I ever seen any evidence that people interpret them as separate signals.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 1:44 PM on December 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

Just one data point here: but no, these are not separate signals for me in any way, nor have I ever seen any evidence that people interpret them as separate signals.

What you really mean by this is that you don't think one of them matters very much, right? Because I'm not sure how they could not be separate signals given that Harvard dropouts exist.
posted by atoxyl at 2:41 PM on December 11, 2015

....no, I respond to those about the same, because while Harvard dropouts exist they're not very common. Given the current climate of grade inflation, I can usually assume that a given Harvard undergrad is going to graduate eventually.

Even if they're not logically identical signals, the effective message that I receive from them is "I was a good enough high school student [and probably privileged enough] to get into Harvard." How they actually did in Harvard is sort of irrelevant.
posted by sciatrix at 2:48 PM on December 11, 2015

Oh, so you're actually arguing for the notion that admission is the more important signal - for some reason I thought the opposite. I agree with that though I think when you start talking about schools that aren't Harvard graduation does mean something and the ratio of importance changes depending on how selective the school is.
posted by atoxyl at 3:02 PM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

Dear Justice Scalia: Here’s what I learned as a black student struggling at an elite college
posted by melissasaurus at 3:08 PM on December 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

Well you, sciatrix are not the person I was originally directing my question toward. But you know what I mean.

I am definitely on the side that diluting the signal value of admissions has an impact. I think the factors you have to weigh against that - well honestly maybe the biggest one might be access to the network of [fancy school] attendees, though I'm sure of course being a minority student tends to limit that access.

I have a degree from a well-regarded public university (very selective by public school standards, not so much compared to Harvard) from a specific program well known to be rigorous, and I'm pretty sure all of those points are relevant to how I look to employers etc. If we were talking specifically about affirmative action at UT that would seem like a better comparison than Harvard. But again I absolutely do buy the admission signalling argument - the question is just how much it counts for.
posted by atoxyl at 3:15 PM on December 11, 2015

Oh, so you're actually arguing for the notion that admission is the more important signal - for some reason I thought the opposite. I agree with that though I think when you start talking about schools that aren't Harvard graduation does mean something and the ratio of importance changes depending on how selective the school is.

Yes. For example Tokyo University is so difficult to get into that the key is getting in, the rest is gravy.
posted by infini at 8:33 PM on December 11, 2015

Scalia was wrong: Students admitted through affirmative action thrive at elite colleges

With new evidence to evaluate this claim my research confirms that this mismatch problem does not exist in affirmative action.

For my book “Race, Class, and Affirmative Action,” I studied a race-neutral, class-based affirmative action policy that was implemented in the mid-2000s by four of Israel’s most selective universities. The first of its kind to be implemented in university admissions anywhere in the world, this policy favors applicants from socioeconomically underprivileged backgrounds in admissions and does not take race into consideration at all.

Using the data from the Israeli universities, I examined what the academic outcomes of the class-based admits would have been if they had enrolled at less selective programs. I compared the academic outcomes — grades and graduation chances — of students from two groups: students who just barely passed the disadvantage cutoff for this voluntary class-based policy (the beneficiaries of the policy) and similar students who applied for preferential treatment but were just below the cutoff (did not benefit from the policy).

The results prove that eligibility for class-based affirmative action is not associated with subpar academic performance.

posted by tonycpsu at 8:04 AM on December 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

Chauncey DeVega, naked capitalism: White America’s Toxic Ignorance: Abigail Fisher, Antonin Scalia and the Real Privilege That Goes Unspoken - "But if one proceeds from Scalia’s and others’ understanding of affirmative action as a type of system that gives unearned and undeserved opportunities to one racial group at the exclusion of others, it is actually white Americans who have been the biggest—and almost exclusive–beneficiaries of such policies."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:19 PM on December 17, 2015

Heterodox Academy: Heterodox Black Professors Say Scalia was Right
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:29 PM on December 17, 2015

To be sure, Scalia is advocating a separate and unequal policy for higher education.
posted by Mental Wimp at 8:43 AM on December 22, 2015