At MIT, Black/Latino Enrollment Drops Sharply After Affirmative Action Ban (opens in new tab)

Race is such a weak proxy for privilege.

A white kid from a trailer park in West Virginia with low-income, absentee parents is far less privileged than a black kid from Palo Alto with affluent, involved parents.

Affirmative Action (or DEI, the name doesn't matter) is a very crude, inaccurate tool to try to use to address the inequalities in the world. The genuinely privileged find ways around it (they have the money, connections and knowledge of how to game the system) while the underprivileged white kids born into low income households end up facing an impossibly uphill battle to escape the cycle of poverty.

To be perfectly clear to preempt uncharitable interpretations, I'm 100% anti-racist, I acknowledge the historical racism prolific throughout American history and I want a more just, fair and equal world. My point is that as a tool to achieve those goals, race-based university admissions and hiring is unproductive at best and counter-productive in most cases. It may be well-meaning people trying to fix real problems, but those intentions don't change the fact that it's ultimately harmful and a net-negative to the goals of a fair, equitable society.

So now students are being admitted based on merit, finally.

Perhaps there are other ways to encourage equality of opportunity rather than this horrible opportunity of outcome that we recently had.

Its not fair for anyone if someone gets into a position they’re not qualified for, or gets admitted somewhere they're very likely to fail. It undermines the institution, the other students, and themselves.

Either the institution has to lower the bar academically, play favorites, modify grading standards, or have a large failure rate within a target demographic.

It’s a net negative for everyone. The great equalizer is merit, which leads upward mobility.

We need to work on better upward mobility, and this is a step in the right direction. Lets put resources in finding, and supporting, real causes for inequality