This is question #19 in the Astral Codex Ten 2023 Prediction Contest. The contest rules and full list of questions are available here. Market will resolve according to Scott Alexander’s judgment, as given through future posts on Astral Codex Ten.
1,000
3.00@jacksonpolack the criteria could mean anything. we're betting on the state of the market creator's mind.
@MartinRandall I can't do so directly, it's an ACX Bot market. I endorse resolving this "YES" if the bot controller is up for it.
@evergreenemily curious to hear why you are disappointed. To me, this seems pretty clear cut that it's a ban on racism in school admissions. I think AA is the most pressing example of systemic racism.
@MarcusAbramovitch Affirmative action policies are necessary as long as structural racism continues to shape secondary education in America. Ruling that they cannot be used will exacerbate existing inequalities, because access to SAT tutors, modern textbooks, smaller class sizes, AP classes, IB classes, and so on are not equally distributed in the United States. Because property taxes are the primary mechanism of funding schools, the quality of education that you have access to in the United States is highly correlated with the average wealth of the neighborhood you grew up in. Because of our long history of racial segregation and discrimination, white students (and to an extent, many Asian students) are at an advantage in the college admissions process because they, on average, have access to more resources. Meanwhile, Black and Latino students on average have access to fewer resources and are at a disadvantage as a result. Affirmative action is meant to account for these advantages and disadvantages, and provide equal access to higher education for everyone in this country, which is a big fucking deal since there is essentially zero economic mobility in the U.S. if you don't have a college degree.
This ruling is good for students who are already at an advantage, and bad for students who are already at a disadvantage. It will make already-wealthy White and Asian communities wealthier, while making it even harder for Black and Latino communities to escape structural poverty. This is not a good thing.
FWIW, I do think that in the long run, affirmative action policies can and should be phased out. But it should not happen until there is equal access to educational opportunity for all students in this country, regardless of their race. We're not there yet.
@evergreenemily It sounds like what you want is for schools to give favour to students of poorer backgrounds, not based on race though. This can (and maybe should) be done.
@MarcusAbramovitch Also, "most pressing example of systemic racism?" What? We've still got a large degree of racial segregation in most major cities (which is heavily correlated with economic segregation and environmental injustice), we have extremely elevated rates of police brutality against people of color, we have a prison-industrial complex that thrives on free labor from a disproportionately large number of Black and Latino men, we have immigration officers who primarily (often exclusively) target Latinos regardless of whether they immigrated legally or not, there's crushing poverty on Native reservations, white Americans hold 80% of the country's wealth despite being 60% of the country's population, Black Americans are twice as likely to be denied credit as white Americans, people with "foreign-sounding" names are often turned down on apartment/job applications for no good reason, the list goes on and on and on...
@MarcusAbramovitch That is exactly what should be done, but until it's a universal requirement for universities to take income of both the family and the surrounding school district into account, the Supreme Court is just throwing out an imperfect solution and providing no replacement. Baby with the bathwater.
the Supreme Court is just throwing out an imperfect solution and providing no replacement. Baby with the bathwater
Huh? Schools have had and will have the option to admit students based on income. There's (mostly) no universal requirement to have race-based affirmative action, yet we have it anyway, why would there need to be one for income?
Also your original argument claims black/some other minority races have less 'SAT tutors, modern textbooks, smaller class sizes, AP classes, IB classes, and so on', 'quality of education', 'more resources'. If that's the reason for affirmative action, why not just make a direct geographic measure of that? I'm confident income, or income with a few things added, would track better with various measures of deprivation than race alone. Like, if the causal graph is Race -> [socioeconomic things] -> [bad things], why admit people based on Race when you can admit people based on [socioeconomic things]?
Anyway if actually implemented this will decrease the % white that non-legacies are which I think is funny and maybe counter to the desires of some farther-right wingers
@jacksonpolack I suppose it's mostly a question of whether universities are able and willing to make enough changes to their admissions processes to achieve those goals, and whether conservatives will try to have race-neutral policies overturned as well, on the grounds that they're "not actually race-neutral."
Let's say State University A decides that it wants to make sure its student body is demographically representative of the state. To achieve this, it offers automatic admission to the top 10% of high school graduates in each school district in the state, fully aware that doing so will decrease the effect of racial and economic segregation on a student's ability to attend the university. In and of itself, it's a race-neutral policy, but it's also one that was explicitly designed with demographic representation in mind. Is that enough to get it litigated against by conservative lawyers, or struck down by conservative judges? Does this case set that kind of precedent, or will it at least be argued that it does?
I suppose it's mostly a question of whether universities are able and willing to make enough changes to their admissions processes to achieve those goals
Whoever legally controls the university can just order admissions to do that, and fire them and replace them with new people if they refuse? Modifying the way your organization operates due to a legal ruling is something that large organizations are very good at, they are more than capable of doing so if they want to.
and whether conservatives will try to have race-neutral policies overturned as well, on the grounds that they're "not actually race-neutral."
That would be a hilarious (also bad) application of existing anti-discrimination law, but I'm confident that won't happen with the current scotus / set of republican ideas. And that agrees with this part of the opinion. I'm pretty sure your 'top 10% of every school' thing would also pass, but it (also) seems to serve equity goals less well than just 'low income boosts your admission score'
The Supreme Court could go a variety of different ways here. Most of them involve what I would call ‘ruling against affirmative action’ and the court is giving every indication they are going to do that. The ‘tighten the scrutiny standard’ option is possible, but I do not expect Roberts to care that much about potential reputational damage here nor do I expect much of it. Given where Metaculus is and the resolution uncertainty this seems very close to me. I bought M10 of YES for tracking.- Zvi Mowshowitz
See here: https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/how-will-scotus-rule-on-affirmative-action/
It's clear the conservative justices will rule against UNC and Harvard, but they have a few options on how to do so.
One is to just reject those schools' particular implementations under "strict scrutiny", but they clearly don't like affirmative action and have no problem overturning precedent so I don't know why they would do this.
Another is to create new limits on affirmative action without eliminating it.
The third possibility mentioned in the article is that they could require a sunset on affirmative action policies by 2028.
The latter two both sound like rulings "against affirmative action" to me, although any ambiguity would have to be judged subjectively by Scott.
Betting YES at 78%.