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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   16082 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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People are never exactly the same. Standards are lowered. As the pressure rises on recruiters, the scales are pushed on ever harder. And typically, for the good jobs, you're punishing people who didn't benefit from their 'privilege' (more than their peers) and rewarding people who never suffered.

Competence matters, and it's hurting.

And really, come on -- you've seen the 300 pts on the SAT and the 80% of Berkeley professors being pitched on the diversity statement. Hell, we had the supreme court justice primarily selected on her identity. Apparently the question wasn't if a black woman would be taken, it was which one. It's not just tie-breakers, it's nowhere close, even if that were meaningful.

In a sense, it really is a motte and bailey, to harken back to the sub/site's name -- the motte is "when things are exactly equal, it's a small tie-breaker to help out" and the bailey is 300 points on the SAT and men being on 40% of college graduates, but women are the victims because there are still a few majors where there are more men.

Hell, we had the supreme court justice primarily selected on her identity

This is always the worst example people who dislike affirmative action bring up. First, the idea that there are specific seats for various ethnic groups or genders or whatever has been true of the Supreme Court since the early 20th century when there was a Jewish seat. In addition, there's no actual way to determine whose the best qualified person to be a Supreme Court Justice, outside of personal political beliefs, and if there are a few dozen people who'd basically vote the same, there's no reason to not try to diversify things.

In addition, there's no actual way to determine whose the best qualified person to be a Supreme Court Justice, outside of personal political beliefs

I find this to be a pretty dubious claim. There are particular skills required of a SC justice. They need a deep knowledge of constitutional law, they need to be able to understand and elucidate complex logical arguments, etc. It's certainly possible to evaluate these skills in a candidate (even if not with perfect precision or inter-annotator agreement). You might say that of the many candidates with the appropriate baseline level of experience, their respective competencies are just too close to distinguish, but that doesn't seem right to me.

Listening to SCOTUS oral arguments and reading decisions, I get the distinct sense that some justices are just a lot better at their jobs than others. Some consistently come up with incisive hypotheticals and clear, eloquent lines of reasoning, and some waste the court's time with meandering, muddled questions. Occasionally, some make even egregiously elementary errors. In one of the recent affirmative action cases, Sotomayor confused de jure and de facto segregation. (I'd ordinarily be happy to give the benefit of the doubt and say this was just a slip of the tongue, but if you look at the full context, it doesn't seem possible that this was the case. She repeats it a few times, and even when sort of given an opportunity to correct herself by Alito, she seems to double down on her misunderstanding.)

I mean, yes, I agree, and I think every Justice on the Court, even the ones I think are terrible and are making the country worse are well-qualified in that they know the law, etc. Like, I think Clarence Thomas has done irreparable harm, but I'm also sure he's smart enough to figure out arguments to get what he wants in an opinion.

If you go through the arguments and opinions of every single Justice in history, they all make mistakes or get caught up in a bad argument, because they're not robots.

if anything, due to the bias toward judges w/ elite credentials, the Supreme Court today has far more well-qualified people than when it was explicitly a place for political favors, whether it was former Congressman who were never judges, or anything else. It wasn't until the Nixon era the idea that the Supreme Court was a place for elite legal minds to put down judgement was even something thought of by many people at all, considering even Eisenhower named Earl Warren to the Court, basically to get his support at the RNC in 1952.

Some Supreme Court justices are better than others in some abstract sense, but in practice, the main consideration is that the appointee should reliably take the appointing party's side while being creative and erudite enough to avoid looking like too much of a hack while doing it.

This is the unfortunate reality but the institution does stand for something symbolic and it's worth preserving that symbol. People learn what to expect by what happens at the high profile appointments, if race is such an important characteristic as to be the deciding factor in appointing someone to one of the most powerful positions in the country what does that say to the common man? Race is hyper important and if your race is not getting favors then you should agitate. You can only broadcast this message so loudly and so long before you start getting whites to internalize it and wake up a racial consciousness and that has traditionally catalyzed the stuff on nightmares.

No, the not looking like a political hack thing is optional.

First, the idea that there are specific seats for various ethnic groups or genders or whatever has been true of the Supreme Court since the early 20th century when there was a Jewish seat.

And it's been an abominable affront to liberalism this whole time. Even if it goes back to the very founding, so did slavery.

Why is it affront to liberalism to name a well-qualified person to the Court who also happens to make sure the Court better reflects what the nation looks like? Like, I'm pretty sure for the entirety of it's existence, there existed Jewish judges that were qualified enough to be on the Court, because, the idea there is a most-qualified person to be on the Court just isn't true.

  • -10

Because emphasizing our differences fractures what should be a cohesive society. Without checking what is the hair color representation on the court? Height representation? Blood type representation? Would it be better if we arbitrarily tried to balance the court on these factors as well? And what about the 10th largest minority? The solution doesn't scale, isn't necesary and causes obvious and justified resentment in those overlooked because of the color of their skin. The idea that everyone is and should be responsible for looking after the interests of their coethnics over other groups is not just deeply unfair but dangerous.

Pretty much false. Jewish dominance of the upper end law schools/firms dates only from around the early 20th century in America. It wasn't until the mid to late 1800s that Jews even arrived in the USA in significant quantities, earlier examples have been magnified by the combined effects on historical fiction of Jewish writers dominating early Hollywood and of efforts towards mild easy diversity lessons.

Meant to add 'once a Jewish seat' was added, which was in 1916.

better reflects what the nation looks like?

1/9 of the US population isn't Jewish.

Sure, but they are a significant part of the nation, and more importantly, a significant minority that could get a seat on the Court in 1916. As opposed to other minorities. After all, 8 out of the other 9 seats were made up of white men, who even then, were less than half of the nation.

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