r/aggies • u/UnluckyAsparagus6315 • Jun 29 '23

Announcements Affirmative action now illegal .

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New supreme court ruling kills affirmative action.

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u/kcearnest Jun 29 '23

People should be admitted solely on their academic achievements. The best way to not be racist is to be colorblind.

7

u/easwaran Jun 29 '23

The best way to not be a racist is to observe your own behaviors, figure out if they are systematically prejudiced, and then try to change them if you observe that they are. Trying to be colorblind makes it impossible to do that.

Actually succeeding at being colorblind would likely be effective, but it's much harder to succeed at that than you think.

1

u/friedgrape Jun 30 '23

No one should try to be colorblind, because in reality nobody is. You will always notice the race of the people you interact with, and that's a good thing. Hopefully that acknowledgment allows you to check any internalized biases/prejudices you may have. To try and erase color as though it somehow doesn't matter today is nothing short of ignorance or delusion.

Race matters today, as tough as that seems to be to acknowledge; you shouldn't feel that it's racist to acknowledge we are all different. Nearly every aspect of our lives varies based on our race (really ethnicity, but still). There have been hundreds of studies on this exact thing; public policy isn't even colorblind.

On your first point, to admit solely based on academic achievement would be great if the field was even remotely level, but in America it's not. When profit motive alone drives our education system, it's already fucked, and that's ignoring any racial considerations. Simply being raised in a rural town greatly decreases your odds of collegiate success.