What difference does it make? "Affirmative Action" vs. "Meritocracy" are principles. "White people are in favor of it" isn't a valid argument for or against either.
The fact of the matter is that through "Affirmative Action", Asians generally receive a handicap, whereas it's the opposite with "Meritocracy". The opposite is true for Blacks.
I understand that. Hence my question, what difference does it make? Are we going to investigate if Blacks are "full of shit" when they argue "for affirmative action"? What are we supposed to do with that information?
There's already endless evidence that people are full of shit, one shouldn't presume that somebody arguing for or against anything is doing it with the noblest of intentions. That should be irrelevant to judging the argument in question.
That's not the point at all, because you don't know how significant was the result when changing the question, because this article conveniently doesn't mention it's sources and if you search a bit you find the probable source article is not online (to the best of my knowledge).
So this article seems to be just about spreading division among racial lines.
Google Scholar search for "Frank L. Samson" - the cited researcher - finds as the #1 hit "Multiple Group Threat And Malleable White Attitudes Towards Academic Merit", Du Bois Review, 10:1 (2013) 233–260.
> The current study presents three main results. First, how Whites adjust the importance that a criterion of academic merit should have depends upon which ethnoracial outgroups Whites are considering. This finding weakens the argument that White commitment to meritocracy is purely based on principle, since the importance given to particular meritocratic criteria, here grade point average, varies depending upon the outgroups under consideration and the extent of the group threat they pose to Whites.
This appears to be aligned with gant's statement, though couched in the academic phrasing "This finding weakens the argument" rather than "full of shit." The title is more direct, with "Malleable White Attitudes Towards Academic Merit".
Since gant's comment is in rough agreement with both the Inside Higher Ed piece and the original paper, I do not agree with your assessment that "that's not the point at all."
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 66.8 ms ] threadThe fact of the matter is that through "Affirmative Action", Asians generally receive a handicap, whereas it's the opposite with "Meritocracy". The opposite is true for Blacks.
Pick your poison.
There's already endless evidence that people are full of shit, one shouldn't presume that somebody arguing for or against anything is doing it with the noblest of intentions. That should be irrelevant to judging the argument in question.
So this article seems to be just about spreading division among racial lines.
That appears to be the probable source article. The date is correct and the experimental methods are as described in the Inside Higher Ed piece. That source article is available from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Samson4/publicati... .
The conclusion section of the paper starts:
> The current study presents three main results. First, how Whites adjust the importance that a criterion of academic merit should have depends upon which ethnoracial outgroups Whites are considering. This finding weakens the argument that White commitment to meritocracy is purely based on principle, since the importance given to particular meritocratic criteria, here grade point average, varies depending upon the outgroups under consideration and the extent of the group threat they pose to Whites.
This appears to be aligned with gant's statement, though couched in the academic phrasing "This finding weakens the argument" rather than "full of shit." The title is more direct, with "Malleable White Attitudes Towards Academic Merit".
Since gant's comment is in rough agreement with both the Inside Higher Ed piece and the original paper, I do not agree with your assessment that "that's not the point at all."