[476] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: In Defense of Affirmative Action
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (matt)
Thu May 3 01:22:53 2001
To: "Sourav K. Mandal" <Sourav.Mandal@ikaran.com>
Cc: mit-talk@mit.edu
From: matt <deberg@xennahtron.com>
Date: 03 May 2001 01:21:50 -0400
In-Reply-To: "Sourav K. Mandal"'s message of "Wed, 02 May 2001 22:49:21 -0400"
Message-ID: <knhr8y7dn2p.fsf@chamomile.xennahtron.com>
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Sourav> Well stated! To see this, one must be willing to apply the
Sourav> logic behind affirmative action/equal opportunity programs
Sourav> to "bad" things as well, such as to justify racial
Sourav> profiling. If racial profiling, the trend analysis of crime
Sourav> by racial/ethnic group, is stupid, why is it okay to extract
Sourav> information about "disadvantage" by racial/ethnic group?
Sourav> It's not consistent to have criminal justice work by one
Sourav> principle of judging people, and university admissions by
Sourav> the opposite.
well, ok, but you're not comparing the two on a level playing field.
remember, AA was put in place to rectify past injustices to an entire
segment of our population. the premise is that the world would be a
better place if all races were on equal footing, and that getting there
requires active government support, including but not limited to AA.
you'd have to make the same sort of argument to justify racial
profiling. i've never heard anyone do that.
if your opposition to AA is simply that it is inconsistent w/ other
possible programs that we don't have, well, that's not very compelling.
Sourav> The individual is everything. Ideally, MIT should have
Sourav> need-blind, race-blind, nationality-blind, gender-blind
Sourav> admissions; the admissions committee should have a random
Sourav> drawing when it can't decide among a group of candidates, to
Sourav> prevent the entry of any bias.
i agree, given an ideal world where opportunity is equal. we're not
there yet.
i think i'm done here. feel free to take the last word.
matt
