I'm cautiously hoping it won't actually be so bad, mainly because I've gone through two of the UC schools. NPR has an article up that discusses the changes in the UCs when AA was eliminated by proposition, but that article is significantly more grim than the UC's press release on the topic (that has actual numbers). UCs today are non-white majority spaces. While some demographics are definitely underrepresented, it doesn't really sit right to call them non-diverse. Will Harvard, etc. follow suit? Maybe not I guess. Fall 2022: 32.2% Asian 22.5% Hispanic/Latino 22.2% White 4.5% African American 0.5% American Indian 0.3% Pacific Islander 2.8% Domestic unknown 15% international 2002 (post Prop. 209) 38% Asian 14% Hispanic/Latino 36% White 3% African American 1% American Indian 1% Pacific Islander 8% Domestic unknown 1% International 1994 (pre-Prop. 209): 37% Asian 15% Hispanic/Latino 36% White 4% African American 1% American Indian 0% Pacific Islander 5% Domestic unknown 1% InternationalUC undergraduates by race and ethnicity
My fundamental viewpoint is that affirmative action is a noble attempt to correct systemic injustice through introduced bias that is easily dismantled by racists. I think your average eugenicist WASP gives no fux how many asians there are at UC Berkeley; Stanford or MIT? Eh those have always been second-tier darkie schools anyway. I think the problem is not that minorities are being denied entrance to elite schools, it's that schools that deny entrance to minorities can still be considered elite and I say that as the grandson of a Jew who was kicked out of Harvard.
My issue with the diversity argument has always been that it supplanted the thing that affirmative action was supposed to do, which is, more or less, reparations. The two black students I had over the years who went to Ivy leagues could have gotten in without any aide from diversity scoring, but each was the child of immigrants, not descendants of slaves. So the school gets to notch its pistol without actually helping anyone. That’s why even though I think it’s a right wing red herring talking point, I still believe that socioeconomic diversity is a better metric than racial diversity for actually trying to advantage the disadvantaged.
Son, did you just say "socialism?" That sounded a lot like socialism. Are you a socialist? Because as we all know, the only socialism allowed in America is for the troops.
I should amend to add that I couldn't possible give the first fuck less about the Ivy League. If 'm trying to hire someone, I barely glance at where they went to school. I know enough people who went to Ivies and enough people who went to middle of the road state schools to know better than to think it makes a difference to the type of person you are. It probably matters in business and law, but in my field it matters fuckall. So I'm all for government sponsored reparations, and free shit for the troops, too, for that matter, but only to the extent that I think any education is as good as any other education. You get out what you put in for the most part.