176

The US Military Academy at West Point is being sued for its race-based admissions policies by the same group that won a landmark case against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Supreme Court over affirmative action earlier this year, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] aelwero@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

Depends...

In the case of West point, the criteria for preferential admissions is going to be based on maintaining the number of officers who are black at 15% or so (to align military officer demographics with the general population). By and large there won't be any actual action, they aren't going to actively go looking for black people to enroll to add numbers. If there is an occasion where candidates are competing for seats, they will adjust preference to pursue their demographic targets. The standards won't get lowered, it's just a bias in competition among those who otherwise qualify.

In some cases, it ends up being a little different. It won't be preference among similarly qualified people, it will be an active pursuit of getting a specific number of black people into seats, sometimes with no regard at all for other qualifications. The qualification for a seat becomes skin color. Essentially, the standard becomes inherently racist.

I don't know exactly how affirmative action was implemented at Harvard or West point, but there's a very real chance that West point will fare better in a lawsuit, because the merits of affirmative action aren't fixed, it depends on how it's implemented. It can be good, it can be racist. If a white guy needs a bunch of qualifications and a black guy just needs to show up with his melanin, that's not cricket, but if both meet the qualifications (to a roughly equivalent degree) and you preference for a target demographic outcome (that roughly mirrors population demographics), thats completely sound and entirely laudable.

The devil's in the details, as with most things. It's not a black and white issue, despite the obvious :)

this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
176 points (98.9% liked)

News

23322 readers
3903 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS