Comment by JuniperMesos
Comment by JuniperMesos 3 days ago
> (My suspicion is that an ability test would lead to a less racist outcome than requiring college. Why? Because minority families struggle more to afford college.)
This might have been true when the United States was mostly white, and "minority" specifically referred to the black population who was mostly descended from slaves brought to the US mainland pre-1808, or to an even small number of native Americans. Today, when the US population is significantly more ethnically diverse, and "minority" just means "anyone nonwhite, regardless of where they came from or what their family history is", there's a lot more variation in exactly how ability to afford college correlates with ethnicity.
While minority technically means what you said, in practice people only care about those identifiable nonwhite groups who are doing poorly.
The result is that Academia is broadly in support of discriminating against certain identifiable minorities, despite their suffering well-known histories of discrimination. The logic is literally that the current success of Asians and Jews means that they are now in the oppressor class, and so should give up opportunities in the name of achieving equity. The same universities that used to discriminate against Asians and Jews out of simple racism, now wish to discriminate against Asians and Jews because they are trying to NOT be racist.
Many in my generation (I'm in my mid-50s) find this twist absurd beyond belief.