“White women benefit most from affirmative action — and are among its fiercest opponents”
“In general, women today are more educated and make up more of the workforce than ever before, in part because of affirmative action policies. Indeed, from the tech industry to publishing, diversity has emerged as an overwhelming increase in the presence of white women, not necessarily people of color.
Incidentally, over the years, white women have become some of affirmative action’s most ardent opponents…
does race inherently undermine an admit’s qualifications?
The question itself is dubious considering the fact that other forms of affirmative action, including gender, are rarely mentioned… Yet it’s a widespread assumption that even Justice Antonin Scalia brought to the fore last December during oral arguments for the Fisher case. He asserted that affirmative action hurts African-American students by putting them in elite institutions they are not prepared for. Study after study shows there’s simply no evidence for the claim.
A look at the effects of affirmative action bans also suggests the idea is based on a false dichotomy. Since California passed Prop 209 in 1996 barring racial considerations for college admissions at public universities, UC Berkeley witnessed a significant drop in the number of black students, from 8 percent pre–Prop 209 to an average of 3.6 percent of the freshman class from 2006 to 2010.
But that drop isn’t necessarily tied to underqualified students of color. Rather, 58 percent of black students admitted from 2006 to 2010 rejected Berkeley’s offer of admission. Alumni, administrators, and current students noted that a possible reason could be a feeling of isolation, or lack of other students of color, at UC’s flagship campus — an ironic consequence of the affirmative action ban.
Asian-American applicants also challenge the colorblind meritocracy myth. According to a sociological study in 2009, white applicants were three times more likely to be admitted to selective schools than Asian applicants with the exact same academic record. And a 2013 survey found that white adults in California deemphasize the importance of test scores when Asian Americans, whose average test scores are higher than white students, are considered”
tl;dr — white people don’t trust systems where they don’t feel like they are if the highest value. When you are used to privilege, equality feels like oppression. Etc… #StandpointTheory
So. Glad. that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Texas.
Related: A great rundown on the actual contexts of Fisher’s case (“Although one African-American and four Latino applicants with lower combined academic and personal achievement scores than Ms. Fisher’s were provisionally admitted, so were 42 white applicants whose scores were identical to or lower than hers. Similarly, 168 black and Latino students with academic and personal achievement profiles that were as good as, or better than, Ms. Fisher’s were also denied, according to the university.”)
