Author Archive

John Scalzi put up a hell of a blogpost yesterday. Titled “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is,” it uses a videogame analogy to explain the concept of white male privilege. It’s great stuff. Go read it.

Done? Cool. Because I had a thing or two to say about the comments.

One common theme among Scalzi’s critics is the idea that white guys used to have it good, but affirmative action has put an end to that, and now the deck is stacked in favor of women and people of color. Here’s a snippet of a representative argument (from commenter bpmitche) to that effect:

In the case of academia, for instance, the admittance guidelines often restrict the number of applicants who will be accepted according to their stated race and their declared major.

For instance, let’s say that the Engineering program at Cal Poly is only going to accept 450 students in a given year; of those 450 openings 200 are set aside for whites, 100 for blacks, 100 for hispanics, and 50 for asians. There are also gender standards – let’s be generous and assume that the goal is pairity between admitted student genders. Now, let’s look at our pool of applicants: although Cal Poly gets applicants from all over the country, there are some demographic truths involved here. First, white males will be the overwhelming majority of applicants to the Engineering program, based simply on the racial demographics of the US (wikipedia). Out of any given 1000 applicants to the Engineering program 637 of them will be white, 163 will be hispanic, 122 will be black and 48 will be asian (with a total of 30 “other or mixed”).

Bpmitche goes on from there to report admission rates for various demographic categories to the nearest tenth of a percent. (“as a white male, your chances … are at best 31.8% … for a black male or female, 81.9%; for a hispanic male 61.7%, female 60.9%; and 100% for both asian males and females.”)

Damning, right? There’s only one problem with this analysis. It’s completely made up.

To start, race-based affirmative action in California’s public universities is illegal, and has been since 1996. Under the California state constitution, the state may not consider “race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.” Period. At Cal Poly, admissions officials aren’t even told applicants’ race or gender.

And even outside of California, the kind of quotas this guy describes are illegal nationwide, and have been since the Supreme Court’s 1978  Bakke decision. Since 2003, moreover, it’s been illegal to give college applicants any quantifiable numerical advantage in admissions on the basis of race. (Colleges are still allowed — though not required — to consider a student’s race on a case-by-case basis, for now.)

Bpmitche also errs in assuming that applicants to an elite engineering program will reflect the demographics of the country as a whole. If that were the case — if people of all races and genders were getting the kind of preparation and training that would render them viable candidates for admission to a school like Cal Poly — then any sort of affirmative action would of course be absurd. But they’re not.

Finally, there’s the issue of Cal Poly’s engineering school’s demographics, perhaps the simplest relevant fact to uncover. Bpmitche estimates that about 45% of the school’s students are white, while the true number is above 60%. He figures the school’s Latino enrollment at 22%, when in fact it’s just 13%. And black students, who bpmitche likewise estimates at 22% of the school’s enrollment, amount to just 0.9% — just 47 students in a school of more than five thousand.

And this, ultimately, is why folks like bpmitche think they’re oppressed.

It’s because they have literally no idea what the facts are.

Sarah McBride won election as American University’s student government president as Tim McBride. She served for a year as Tim McBride. But two weeks ago, as she stepped down from the office, she set the record straight:

As SG President, I realized that as great as it is to work on issues of fairness, it only highlighted my own struggles. It didn’t bring the completeness that I sought. By mid-fall, it had gotten to the point where I was living in my own head. With everything I did, from the mundane to the exciting, the only way I was able to enjoy it was if I re-imagined doing it as a girl. My life was passing me by, and I was done wasting it as someone I wasn’t.

I told my family and some of my closest friends over winter break. My brothers and parents greeted me with immediate support and unconditional love. This was the first time that my parents have had to worry about my safety, my job prospects and my acceptance. This story is my experience and my experience alone. There is no one-size-fits-all narrative; everyone’s path winds in different ways.

The experience highlights my own privilege. I grew up in an upper-income household, in an accepting environment and with incredible educational opportunities. I never worried about my family’s reaction.

But those worries are all too common for most. For far too many trans individuals, the reality is far bleaker; coming out oftentimes means getting kicked out of your home. I say this not to diminish my own experience, but to acknowledge the privilege and opportunities which have been afforded to me.

Today is the next day of the life I’ve already had, but at the same time, the first day of the life I always knew I wanted to lead. Starting on Saturday, I will present as my true self. Going forward, I ask that you use female pronouns (she/her) and my chosen name, Sarah.

Congrats, Sarah, and good luck.

The Council of University of California Faculty Associations is saying there’s a deal in the works between Governor Jerry Brown and UC President Mark Yudof to “loosen the most important ties between the university and the state.”

Under the terms of the reported deal, UC will be freed up to raise tuition, increase out-of-state enrollment, and divert state funds to construction projects. And crucially, it will no longer have to make the specifics of these arrangements public.

UC’s out-of-state enrollment has been skyrocketing in recent years, as has out-of-state tuition. Just a few years ago, non-Californians represented just 10% of UC Berkeley enrollment, for instance, but now they make up nearly a third of the Berkeley student body — and they’re paying rates higher than Harvard’s.

Let’s underscore that: A third of UC Berkeley students are from out-of-state, and they’re being charged private university fees.

This is the future of the UC system, if CUCFA’s analysis is accurate.

And it should be noted as well that UC’s student body isn’t expected to get bigger, at least not at rates that would be necessary to keep rates of in-state enrollment stable. As CUCFA notes, UC is likely to “dump a larger number of eligible Californians onto the CSU and Community Colleges, which will in turn pass on their overflow to for-profit schools” if this plan goes through.

This represents nothing less than the privatization of the UC system, once the greatest public university in the nation.

In all the conversation around Barack Obama’s announcement that he now supports same-sex marriage, one thing is often forgotten: just how quickly public opinion is shifting on this issue.

It’s often been reported, for instance, that black Americans oppose same-sex marriage by a 49-39 margin. What’s less often mentioned is that that figure, from April of this year, represents a 27-point tightening from 2008, when 63% of blacks opposed same-sex marriage, and only 26% supported it. At that rate of change, same-sex marriage will reach plurality support late next year and majority support sometime in 2015. To put it another way, black views on same-sex marriage today are exactly where whites’ positions stood just four years ago.

And if you look at charts of public opinion on the issue, it’s clear that views aren’t just changing quickly, the rate of change is accelerating. We’ve reached a tipping point on the question, and we may reach something approaching consensus far sooner than we think.

Don’t believe me? Check this out:

More Americans support same-sex marriage today than supported marriage between blacks and whites in 1994.

That’s right. Same-sex marriage is more popular in the United States in 2012 than interracial marriage was just eighteen years ago. And as with same-sex marriage, polling results on interracial marriage show a long period of slow change followed by a dramatic, rapid shift.

In 1968, only 20% of Americans approved of interracial marriage. Support grew at a rate of about one point a year over the next quarter century, and actually slowed in the eighties and early nineties. But then the dam broke, and support shot up 38 points in the next 18 years. Today, support for interracial marriage stands well above 90% for all but the oldest Americans.