No, it really is about specific ideas. I’ll discuss four:
1) Many on the left believe that non-whites are a cohesive political coalition with common cause and shared interests. This goes back to the 1990s with the “rainbow coalition.” A lot of the way the left talks to minorities, and various things like affinity groups arise out of this idea that non-whites will bring about left-liberal changes to society. Also the antagonistic way many on the left talk about whites. But most non-whites don’t think of themselves that way, as we saw in the election.
2) Because of (1), many in the left believe in permissive approaches to policing and immigration because of the disproportionate effects of those policies on black and Hispanic people. But the public wants more policing and less immigration, including black and Hispanic people.
3) Many on the left believe in treating people of different races different to remedy past race-based harms. But the public doesn’t like this—even California voted overwhelmingly against repealing the state ban on affirmative action.
4) Related to the above, there’s a general belief on the left that, in any given issue, policy should cater to the “most marginalized.” When confronted with the burdens to the average person, their reaction is to either (a) deny such costs and accuse the other part of various “isms” and “phobias,” or (b) assert that the average person must bear the cost.
What percentage of what group is “many on the left”? This does not sound plausible to me.
Here's the Harvard data from the somewhat recent SCOTUS trial: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1199/222325/202...
Asians in the top academic decile are half as likely as African Americans in the 5th decile to be accepted. I highly doubt exposing Americans to this data would make them more favorable to affirmative action– the very opposite is more likely.
Activists then forgot this was the point and changed the name to "BIPOC" to de-emphasize half the "POC" group (the ones who aren't "BI"), but the whole point was to keep them in the group.
“In that survey, 74% of U.S. adults said that, when making decisions about hiring and promotions, companies and organizations should take only a person’s qualifications into account, even if it results in less diversity.”
Couple that with the prospect of America becoming a majority non-white, it’s easy to see why the broader left of center embraced the rhetoric and policies they did over the last decade—e.g. reframing policy issues like immigration and policing in racial justice terms.
The problem is that “white racism” as a lens for understanding America—widely shared by modern liberals—is a poor tool for understanding Latinos and Asians.
> Among those who had ever heard the term, 36% said affirmative action is a good thing, 29% said it is a bad thing and a third weren’t sure.
It was a preceding Gallup poll that found the result you're thinking of:
> By comparison, Gallup has asked U.S. adults whether they “generally favor or oppose affirmative action programs for racial minorities.” In 2021, the last time Gallup asked this question, a 62% majority of Americans favored such programs.
The disconnect between this sort of response with the one you cited at the end of your comment just serves to underline my point about the public's lack of clear understanding of what "affirmative action" means (and they cannot be entirely blamed for this, since in the culture, it has come to mean different things).
Institutions like Harvard will (for the foreseeable future) always have vastly more fully qualified applications than they can accept. The concept of affirmative action was originally intended by its proponents to be used only when tie-breaking between equally qualified candidates. Harvard and the other Ivies have this situation in extremis. The idea was that when faced with the question "well, we have 26 people all fully qualified, how are to pick between them?" that using race was a legitimate choice as long as the racial demographics of the institution did not match those of the overall population. They have (for a while) used gender in a similar way, and arguably could use favorite ice cream flavor if they chose, because the candidates are all qualified to be selected.
There was never a suggestion that "affirmative action" meant selecting less qualified candidates because of their racial status. However, the conservative right has claimed that this is what affirmative action really means in the world, and this idea has been broadly picked up by the media and public at large. Whether there is actually any evidence that this has happened on a significant scale is not something I've seen adequately addressed. From what I have read, including the Harvard case, I'd say it was much more an unfounded grievance on the part of people who felt they had a right to be admitted or hired than what actually happens. I could be wrong.
When stated by opponents seeking to strawman it, certainly.
But:
"when faced with multiple equally qualified candidates for a position, it is permissble and perhaps even desirable to use demographic factors such as race or gender to select among them"
generally doesn't get much opposition. It's not absolutely impossible that this is a steelman version of affirmative action, but it's also the one I grew up hearing from the actual proponents of the concept.
And people see that this framing of “breaking ties between qualified candidates” concept is merely wordplay. Harvard doesn’t say “everyone above a particular academic index score is ‘equally qualified’ and there’s no difference above that line.” According to the SFFA data, Asian and white students in the 10th decile of academic index score are 5-6 times as likely to be admitted as white and Asian students in the 5th decile (who have virtually no chance). But black and Hispanic students in the 5th decile are as likely or more likely to be admitted as white and Asian students in the 9th and 10th deciles. Thus, Harvard uses race to admit less qualified students—as measured by the very metric Harvard has established to measure qualifications.
Most people intuitively understand this without the explanation. They intuitively understand that grades and test scores establish a sliding scale of more or less qualified candidates.
Regardless it took only a few years for what I heard to go from "we should use gender/race as a tie breaker" to "our next head of sales must be a woman", stated openly on a recorded all hands video call. And that's inevitable because the moment someone accepts the claim that there's a problem that must be solved, they lose the ability to push back on ever more extreme solutions. The only way out is to argue that there is in fact no problem to be solved and never was, which results in people being targeted and fired for -isms of whatever kind.
So in practice affirmative action is deeply unpopular and it's not due to people being idiots. It's because the "cost free" framing that proponents like to use is misleading. There is always a cost.
Do you mean majority when you say public? Do you think what the majority thinks should be done (mob rule)?
I my country openly saying you want a specific gender for a job position would violate the law. Is that not the case in the US?
> the moment someone accepts the claim that there's a problem that must be solved, they lose the ability to push back on ever more extreme solutions
That doesn't seem to be the case for other problems. I don't see what makes this problem special so there can be no push back on extreme solutions.
> The only way out is to argue that there is in fact no problem to be solved and never was
What about using non-extreme steps to try to mitigate the issue.
> So in practice affirmative action is deeply unpopular and it's not due to people being idiots. It's because the "cost free" framing that proponents like to use is misleading. There is always a cost.
Idiots is a word that originated in ancient Greek and was used for the people who did not care about the matters of the Polis. Everybody is born an idiot until they participate in public matters. That costs (time and effort to familiarize yourself). In that sense maybe the people you are talking about are idiots...
It is illegal for jobs in USA, but not for university student spots. Trump has said he will make that illegal though, so it might change and become illegal like in most of the world.
What a university can do, or any form of corporation in the USA can do, is to announce goals to have its body be made up in roughly the same was as the general population, according to some demographic metrics.
So you can't say "student #68 must be female"; you can say "we are aiming for a 50/50 male/female student body" and then take steps to get there.
Of course, should they be admitted and it is realized that they abused the definitions of race that society uses to group and classify people in some egregious way, they may face consequences for that.
And sure, I'm entirely sympathetic to the scientific observation that race is a myth, but in the actual USA, in actual 2024, basic physiological features like skin color, face shape, voice tone, hair texture will result in you receiving different treatment in many contexts. Whatever triggers such different treatment is what defines race on the ground (ignoring the equivalent set of things related to sex/gender).