Good news, fellow Black people! The SCOTUS decision ending affirmative action doesn't apply to military college!. So we're good enough to get shot to pieces in [insert brown country here], but not good enough to go to an elite institution! Yay!

#SCOTUS #AffirmativeAction #BlackFedi #BlackMastodon #BlackTwitter #Blackademia

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@KFuentesGeorge So what now? Students can't do anything except volunteer for political campaigns; most students aren't even old enough to vote when they're applying for colleges.

But universities can fight back. And many probably will. They can't use race, per se, any more, so they'll try to find proxies for race as a way to preserve the goals of affirmative action.

I don't know what race proxies universities can find to work around the decision, but I have a few ideas:

- Enslavement of documented ancestors (could also include forced labor by prisoners of war, Holocaust survivors, US prison slavery, etc.)

- Family history of residence in location affected by red-lining (could also include very poor white people)

- K-12 education in schools underfunded due to historical red-lining (likewise includes very poor whites, but not whites who dodged underfunded schools by attending segregated private schools)

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@KFuentesGeorge
- Family members victimized by hate crimes, including crimes defined as hate crimes by legislation passed after the crimes took place (could also include antisemitic, anti-LGBT+, and other hate crimes)

Although numerous people who were generally not given affirmative action considerations might be included in such race proxies, that's not a clear injustice. Preferences based on red-lining might need to be carefully written to minimize exploitation of gentrified neighborhoods. And some preferences might add documentation burdens. But there are potential work-arounds.

Of course if the right wing of the Supreme Court were not so intent on enabling racists, no such proxies would be necessary.

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@Steve98052 Exactly. While a/a is remarkably unpopular, I think some of the sorts of things you are proposing here most people would support.

Colleges already look at this sort of thing, right? If you have certain test scores/gpa/etc, it's more impressive if you also had to overcome some kind of hardship: moving from a non-english-speaking country, illness, etc. So a lot of the things you list should be considered – if not already? – victim of crime, underfunded k-12, etc.

(I think those things are more popular than a/a because they focus on the individual's circumstance rather than the group one belongs to.)

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