Affirmative Action Around the World

What Hacker News says

1. dylanjermiahSep 2015
   If anyone here wants to know about the long history of Affirmative Action you should definitely read "Affirmative Action Around the World" by Thomas Sowell.

   Can't sing enough praise about it. Sourced incredibly And clear logical points.

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2. dylanjermiahSep 2015
   Have you actually seen the history of Affirmative Action? I'd suggest you read 'Affirmative Action around the world' by Thomas Sowell. There's a plethora of sources and facts packed onto every page, very enlightening.
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3. dylanjermiahJul 2015
   I'd suggest anyone here seriously interested in the effects of Affirmative Action and similar policies read 'Affirmative Action Around the World' by Thomas Sowell. It's only 200pages, but incredibly sourced and well written. Highly recommend it for those wanting a further understanding.
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4. PathOfEclipseJun 2023
   > And then I think: you can't just stop doing a bad thing and pretend it didn't happen. You've got to try to make things right.

   Who did the bad thing, and who is going to make it right, and how?

   > Have things been made right by now? I have no idea.

   How would anyone know? People assume we can establish a causal relationship between past discrimination and present disparity, which thing is impossible. Anti-racists claim that all disparity is evidence of discrimination, but this is as religious a belief as ancient Greeks claiming that all lightning comes from Zeus, God of thunder. And likely to be about as wrong in hindsight.

   In books like "Discrimination and Disparities", "Black Rednecks and White Liberals", and "Wealth, Poverty, and Politics", the author Thomas Sowell gives many examples of minority groups that prospered far above and beyond their relative majorities despite real and systemic oppression against them. And, in "Affirmative Action Around the World", he details just how disastrous, ineffective, and harmful affirmative action programs consistently end up being.

   If you as a doctor consistently diagnose symptoms incorrectly, conclude the wrong illness, and, worst of all, prescribe treatment that ends up harming your patient more than helping, you are a terrible doctor that should be barred from practicing. The political left have been such terrible doctors decades nigh on century. They misdiagnose all disparity as due to racism or oppression, and their prescriptions, whether it's the great society programs of the 60s, affirmative action of the 70s, or today's DEI bureaucracies, are highly counterproductive and devastating to society.

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5. frog_squidApr 2020
   Yes, in Thomas Sowell's Affirmative Action Around the World

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_Action_Around_the_...

   "They tend to benefit primarily the most fortunate among the preferred group (e.g. black millionaires), often to the detriment of the least fortunate among the non-preferred groups (e.g. poor whites)"

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