- Joined
- Jul 1, 2017
A lot of people understandably don't like affirmative action. Yes, giving mediocre to inferior blacks or women free spots really does suck. But consider that there may be some benefits to affirmative action if done right, and many successful organizations and societies used it as such.
Without affirmative action, certain groups of people will dominate certain fields. For instance, most doctors and psychiatrists are Jewish, Asian, or Indian. Jews make up 2% of American society but 14% of doctors and 29% of psychiatrists, and Asians are 6% of Americans but 19% of doctors. Engineering is dominated by Asians and Indians, like MIT is mostly Asian. This is clearly a problem, since a single group dominating a field leads to serious problems in terms of how the field functions and just who gets jobs in that field. Imagine a white or black doctor not able to move up because he doesn't go to all the bar mitzvahs like the Jewish doctors do.
Society once noticed this. Ivy League schools used to restrict the number of Jews admitted each year. Some countries like Poland in the 1920s and 1930s had even more quotas on Jews to prevent their overrepresentation. One of the finest historical affirmative action systems was no doubt the imperial exam found in Mongol China. This system was meant to train bureaucrats, but its test matter (Confucianism) naturally favored Chinese people, so to keep from being dominated by their Chinese subjects the Mongols made a quota for themselves and allied races like Turks and even gave themselves free points on the exam.
So why don't we have something like this? It could be weighted on IQ and population. For instance, blacks would get 2% of college admissions (or whatever) since they're a little over 12% the population and the black IQ of 85 is 15.7 percentile of the normal 100 IQ. On the other end we have Jews who have an average IQ of 112, about 79th percentile, so Jews (2% of the population) would get about 3% of college admissions. We could also mix this with affirmative action based on region, to limit overrepresentation from small but high IQ states like Massachusetts and DC. This system would limit ethnic overrepresentation and restore fairness into an otherwise meritocratic system.
What do you guys think? Maybe affirmative action really isn't so bad!
Without affirmative action, certain groups of people will dominate certain fields. For instance, most doctors and psychiatrists are Jewish, Asian, or Indian. Jews make up 2% of American society but 14% of doctors and 29% of psychiatrists, and Asians are 6% of Americans but 19% of doctors. Engineering is dominated by Asians and Indians, like MIT is mostly Asian. This is clearly a problem, since a single group dominating a field leads to serious problems in terms of how the field functions and just who gets jobs in that field. Imagine a white or black doctor not able to move up because he doesn't go to all the bar mitzvahs like the Jewish doctors do.
Society once noticed this. Ivy League schools used to restrict the number of Jews admitted each year. Some countries like Poland in the 1920s and 1930s had even more quotas on Jews to prevent their overrepresentation. One of the finest historical affirmative action systems was no doubt the imperial exam found in Mongol China. This system was meant to train bureaucrats, but its test matter (Confucianism) naturally favored Chinese people, so to keep from being dominated by their Chinese subjects the Mongols made a quota for themselves and allied races like Turks and even gave themselves free points on the exam.
So why don't we have something like this? It could be weighted on IQ and population. For instance, blacks would get 2% of college admissions (or whatever) since they're a little over 12% the population and the black IQ of 85 is 15.7 percentile of the normal 100 IQ. On the other end we have Jews who have an average IQ of 112, about 79th percentile, so Jews (2% of the population) would get about 3% of college admissions. We could also mix this with affirmative action based on region, to limit overrepresentation from small but high IQ states like Massachusetts and DC. This system would limit ethnic overrepresentation and restore fairness into an otherwise meritocratic system.
What do you guys think? Maybe affirmative action really isn't so bad!
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