Affirmative Action is a No Go Says Supreme Court...

And that’s the bullshit you latch onto? You do know there are, literally, millions of white kids who find all kinds of bullshit excuses to avoid an education as well.

I didn't say there weren't. Just that blacks went from wanting education to thinking it's acting white and it's nothing whites did. It's entirely in their own communities.

Cancelling affirmative action while retaining legacy preferences (which overwhelming go to white people) reduces access to minorities in a way that certainly isn't meritocratic. Therefore if you're not automatically linking the two, people are reasonable in concluding that your motives are otherwise.

The word ‘entitlement’ is being used as propaganda. And is being used incorrectly. “Entitlement” is some asshole with a hard dick who sees an unconscious woman and feels entitled to stick his dick in her. Entitlement is paying to have someone take entrance exams for one’s precious little idiots and pretend s/he was accepted by “merit”. No one who is poor has anything they are “entitled” to.

In their defense, most of the people crying "meritocracy" do say they oppose things like legacy admissions and the wealthy buying their way in. That said, you rarely see them take action against those things like they do with AA, so it could just be lip service. The meritocracy people sure were silent when Dubya was president, or any time the most highly recognized scientists say anything they don't like. Then you're more likely to see "anti-elitist" messaging.

There are stupid bitches on the internet that bash feminists from years gone by. I bet you listen to them and quote them. Doesn’t mean they aren’t wrong. They’re ignorant and so are you.

https://afro.com/whats-going-on-with-black-high-school-graduation-rates/

1 in 4 blacks aren't graduating. And that's including those that are just promoted because the school pencil whips results because their funding is tied into statistics. Sure they might not be able to read, write, or add at their appropriate grade level, but they got out the door nonetheless and that's what's important.

https://thehill.com/opinion/educati...-cannot-read-or-do-math-and-that-imperils-us/

Remember how much fun bussing was and we found it had nothing to do with the school itself or the funding because white kids and black kids just kept on at the same levels as before? I sure do. It's almost like there was something cultural there.

But no.

"Something cultural".

Far as I can tell, poor blacks have the same culture as poor whites.
Even the rap and hip-hop.
Metalheads are virtually extinct.

What else you got?

The advice I give folks who are entering the job market for the first time is that 75% of success is about who you know and the relationships you establish.

(The other 25% is actually knowing what the heck you're doing.)

If you accept the premise that Pat Mahomes is a better quarterback than Deshaun Watson by the numbers (which I think one must do, based on such stats as two SuperBowl wins, two SuperBowl MVPs, etc.), then there are not merit-based reasons why Watson should get paid better.

The thing is that most jobs don't have the same tests, or really any tests, applied to them. If we stick to the school context, there are tests like the SATs and the ACTs and what not that attempt to standardize people's skills. But it's at least an open question if such tests actually properly document the skills one needs to thrive in an academic environment or anything except how good at test-taking one might be. And GPA can vary wildly from school to school and from course to course. If someone gets an A in advanced basketweaving, should that count more than a B in AP Calculus? Or if someone goes to Grade Inflation High School and has a 4.0 GPA, is that more impressive than a 3.9 at Regular Grade Academy?

While the idea of doing education by "strict meritocracy" might be nice, it certainly isn't how it's currently done, and it's probably at least questionable if it could be done that way, or if doing it that way would be desirable even if it could.

As Dicky said, it's great how you insist on people not reading into what you say but don't afford the same respect you demand.

In a true meritocracy, there would be a lot of people who are now successful that would not be, and a lot of people who get held back who would be more successful. I have enough ego to think that I'd probably do OK personally, as would most people I know and care about. At the same time, regardless of what my personal feelings might be, it is pretty objectively clear that we do not presently live in a meritocracy, or at least, it is so riddled with exceptions that even the pretense that the better person for a job usually will get it seems questionable at best.

For you to be in the right (not the far-right)?

I think you need to wait for a different universe.

I can honestly say that I want a heart surgeon who is best at what he or she does. No other factors matter, although being personable is a plus.

I’ve always hired based on merit. Out of my 38 employees, about 80% of them are asian

You can't seriously think race, sex, competition, and ability are the only factors people were considering, and now it's only competition and ability.

says the guy screaming "meritocracy"...

define "merit"?

because it usually seems closely related to nepotism.

don't believe me? look at the idiots in charge for the last, well, forever.

No, that doesn't necessarily follow. I don't follow sports at all, but those players are also representatives and celebrities, and so more than just their performance on the field could conceivably be counted among their merits.

You can talk to academic staff and their willingness to embrace national standards above their own agendas for that.

You seem to be setting a standard of "flawless in application and result, with guaranteed success for all, or else the entire concept is invalid. "

I state myself plainly and get to the damned point. I expect nothing less from anyone else. But people here like to tapdance around a point they know won't hold up to scrutiny, so they couch it in a fog of bullshit, leaving much open to interpretation so they can disavow what they can't defend.

Again, you seem to be describing the impossible standard of a PERFECT meritocracy, and judging it through a superficial assessment of outcome.

At they speculative level, it could include anything. That doesn't mean you get to assume it by default.

Maybe I’m undercaffeinated, but I have no idea what you’re saying here.

I don't believe removing sex and race leaves only merit, but without a specific example we may only speculate on whether those other factors are valid and just.

I hope we can, at least, agree that race and gender are not elements of merit.

Merit is what someone in authority says it is. Seen all kinds of BS in many companies during my working career. Being someones son in law is merit, working extra hours and doing extra does not. Conservatives like to say unions drove companies overseas but the truth and this comes from owners of the companies was managerial corruption is what did it. A lot of companies were so filled with useless friends and relatives of management that they couldnt function without hiring contractors. Owners just pulled up stakes and moved overseas.

The teams are only paying players for their performance on the field. So even if Deshaun Watson and the other QBs who are paid more than Pat Mahomes are somehow "better than" Pat Mahomes in non-playing metrics, that should not lead to them getting paid more than him by the team. But I will throw it to you: what merit-based statistics are you envisioning that might explain why Patrick Mahomes is paid less than other QBs that he consistently outperforms?

Can you point to a single place in life that largely functions as a meritocracy where by and large people who are better get rewarded more, and people who are worse get drummed out? Where there is even an effort to rank people beyond "Good enough" and where subjective factors don't play a significant role?

You say you would operate college admissions as "a strict meritocracy." What exactly do you mean when you say that? People get admitted based only on their GPA and SAT scores?

I do not describe an impossible standard of a perfect meritocracy at all. I am saying that despite lip service to meritocracy, it's abundantly clear that in most fields of life, people do not even attempt to determine who might be "objectively" better than others, that we have all seen and experienced people who are strong at a job get drummed out for non-performance reasons, people who are objectively bad at their jobs get propped up and even promoted. If it seemed to be the case where there were just the occasional person who was punished for their competence or who was rewarded despite their incompetence, that would be one thing. But things are far more haphazard than that, or so it seems to me.

Legacy status, ability to pay, being friends with someone in the admissions department, parents' presence, parents' disposable income and free time (specifically for tutors and test prep), likelihood of donating after graduation (for non-profits), extracurricular participation (and by implication families' income to allow that participation). I'm sure I could think of more. And we haven't even touched on whether athletic ability should count as ability for college admissions.

Yes, but the post I was quoting says that no other factors exist anymore now that we’ve gotten rid of race and sex.

In addition, most colleges strive to achieve some level of balance in terms of the geographic makeup of a class (i.e., even if a school could fill a class with 100 percent students from in-state who meet a high enough GPA/standardized testing threshold and vice versa, it would not) and the academic interests of a class (i.e., even if there were enough budding scientists with high enough standardized test scores and GPAs to fill 100 percent of a year's slots, no college would just admit those and not budding English/poli-sci/business or whatever majors, and vice versa).

Three Boston-area groups are now challenging Harvard's legacy admissions policies, arguing -- correctly -- that they basically amount to affirmative action for rich kids.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/03/us/harvard-alumni-children-affirmative-action.html

Hey, meritocracy, right?

Which starts to touch on another thing: should government-funded colleges be positively selective about academic ability at all? There's an argument to be made that the best colleges should be taking the worst students since they need the most help. I wouldn't want to have to make that argument (there are a lot of potential consequences, some of which are good, some bad, some absurd), but it's certainly not a completely indefensible idea once government funding is involved, and it's possibly a debate worth having in Congress (since they control the funding) if it hasn't happened in the past (preferably in closed session so it can't be made into political hay).

Wait a second. Apparently Roberts got a carve out for military academies?!?!?

https://www.military.com/daily-news...e-court-ruling-ending-affirmative-action.html