Justice Dept. To Take on Affirmative Action in College Admissions

I hope this isn't too political, but I wonder why "disadvantaged groups" are defined by things like race rather than poor academic performance, poverty, criminal history, mental health, not being interested, not desiring prosperity, etc. There are so many reasons people don't get education and so many ways to slice and dice the population into groups.

&quot;The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times.&quot;<p>The applicants who are most discriminated against are Asian applicants. Asians are basically the Jews of yesteryear when it comes to college admissions.<p>A common criticism is that Asian applicants &quot;game&quot; the system by getting good grades, scoring well on standardized exams, and loading up on extracurriculars. Compare that with sending your kids to an elite private feeder high school. That&#x27;s not gaming the system at all &#x2F;s<p>Affirmative action in today&#x27;s implementation is less about equal opportunity and more about equal outcome. I don&#x27;t even see it as a race thing as even the POC applicants that benefit from these policies are almost always economically advantaged. What we need is economic affirmative action. If you come from property you should get second consideration. Infinitely harder getting good grades while impoverished vs a 4.0 at the local 40k&#x2F;year private high school Ivy feeder.

Article takes too long to huff and puff and fluff before it gets to the heart of the matter (and then veering off into tangents shortly thereafter):<p><i>The Supreme Court has ruled that the educational benefits that flow from having a diverse student body can justify using race as one factor among many in a “holistic” evaluation, while rejecting blunt racial quotas or race-based point systems. But what that permits in actual practice by universities — public ones as well as private ones that receive federal funding — is often murky</i>.<p>It would have also behooved a general audience to be given some history: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.britannica.com&#x2F;event&#x2F;Bakke-decision" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.britannica.com&#x2F;event&#x2F;Bakke-decision</a><p>It&#x27;s not an easy issue.

Oh dear, the NYTimes should have really gone with &quot;anti-white and anti-asian bias&quot; in their title (as mentioned in the article) instead of just anti-white. Otherwise they are somewhat priming their audience. And well, everyone who will only read the title.

I think making it about race just creates more division and is really really dumb. Scores should be normalized by income, stability of household, then holistic factors such as extraneous circumstances, health, etc. Race should have no impact except in extraneous circumstances in rare cases

Make higher education a national priority, and free for everyone, and this issue would go away (though systemic racism and class-based oppression would not). There are lots of benefits to having an educated populace.

I suggest getting rid of anti-discrimination laws completely for things like college admissions. Affirmative action is probably not bad enough to be worth the effort either.

I&#x27;m sure they&#x27;ll find a way to screw this up (because it&#x27;s Trump), but affirmative action does need reform. In its present state, it can theoretically benefit affluent under-represented minorities at the expense of impoverished Midwestern whites (and especially screws over disadvantaged Asian applicants). Affirmative action should be predicated on family income&#x2F;net worth. As they presently stand, such programs are literally racist.

Can they also &quot;take on&quot; legacy admissions? Why should someone get a better chance at going to college because their parents went to the same college?<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.collegeconfidential.com&#x2F;admit&#x2F;legacy-applicants-have-admissions-advantage&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.collegeconfidential.com&#x2F;admit&#x2F;legacy-applicants-h...</a>