Tag Archives: politics

Racism in School Admission Selection Criteria

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The advocates for Harvard and the Federal government in defending Harvard’s and the University of North Carolina’s racist selection criteria—all in the name of diversity and equity, understand—both said that they saw no end to their use of race in their selection criteria. Our Progressive-Democratic Party President Joe Biden, through his Solicitor General, doesn’t even see a need to end racism in admission selection criteria.

Seth Waxman, Harvard’s advocate, admitted that the school is trying hard to get to a race-neutral future but sees no end in sight for preferences.

Sure they’re trying to put an end to it. Or to something.

Waxman went further, rationalizing

Harvard’s use of race by saying it is merely one of many “tips” that the school uses in making judgments about whom to admit—like whether a student is the child of an alumnus, or an athlete. …”just as being, you know, an oboe player in a year” when the school orchestra needs an oboe player “will be the tip.”

Chief Justice John Roberts commented on the disgusting nature of that:

We did not fight a Civil War about oboe players. We did fight a Civil War to eliminate racial discrimination.

Biden was even more explicit:

Elizabeth Prelogar, the US Solicitor General…said using race the way the schools do could continue as long as their interest in diversity is “compelling.”

This disdain for the ability of some groups of Americans to compete, and so to maintain the need explicitly to protect those groups, is straight out of the philosophy of Roger Taney, and it’s shameful.

Some Contextual Questions

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Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and of Alphabet’s wholly-owned subsidiary Google, in addressing anti-trust questions regarding Google’s ad-tech business, claimed that

Ad technology is a small part of what Google does, he said, and doesn’t make up a significant share of the company’s revenue, according to people familiar with the meeting [Pichai’s with Senator Mike Lee (R, UT)].

That begs a number of questions though. Questions being begged include these:

  • How much ad-tech revenue is there in the aggregate in the ad-tech market?
  • How many players are there in the ad-tech market?
  • How much ad-tech revenue is taken in by the (let us say) 5 largest players other than Google?
  • How much non-ad-tech revenue do those 5 largest take in with which they can buffer downturns in the ad-tech market compared to Google’s non-ad-tech revenue?

Regarding that last question,

…the parts [of Alphabet’s/Google’s revenue] that mostly relate to brokering the buying and selling of ads on other websites—generated about $31.7 billion last year, or about 12% of its revenue.

That suggests that Alphabet/Google has around 88% of its revenue from non-ad-tech sources with which to buffer its ad-tech in/outflow.

In the end, it doesn’t matter how much or little Google’s ad-tech revenue is in Google’s scheme of things. What matters is how much or little Google’s ad-tech revenue is in the ad-tech market place.

Racial Discrimination and College Admission

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Racial discrimination—racism—is enthusiastically practiced in a broad number of American colleges and universities, including in particular Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, whose racial discrimination in admission has been hauled before the Supreme Court.

Edward Blum, Founder and President of Students for Fair Admissions, made a sound argument against those two schools’ racism in admissions in his Sunday Wall Street Journal op-ed.

The common element in each lawsuit is the claim that both schools racially gerrymander their freshman classes by illegally raising the bar for certain racial and ethnic groups and lowering the bar for others.

I say the matter is broader than that, though. Racial discrimination everywhere and always is an immoral discrimination. The immorality doesn’t make it illegal, but it should inform Americans considering whether two support these two institutions in any form. It’s also wholly illegal under the 14th Amendment of our Constitution, which states in pertinent part

…nor shall any State…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

UNC is a public institution, and so is plainly bound by our Constitution. Harvard is a private institution, but stands in blatant violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It’s also plainly a public accommodation within the spirit of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and so still cannot discriminate on the basis of race.

A Couple Questions

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Renault and Nissan are trying to reduce Renault’s participation in Nissan from its current 43% ownership to 15%—or at least Nissan is. The French government owns 15% of Renault. There are a number of impediments to the partial divestiture, including the divvying up of intellectual property that might have been developed jointly. One of the deals that would be made from the divestiture, though, involves Nissan investment in another arm of Renault (which raises the question in my peabrain about what Nissan would be getting, really, from Renault’s reduction in direct ownership of Nissan, but that’s for another time):

In exchange, Nissan would invest in Renault’s new electric-vehicle business, which the French auto maker aims to take public next year, the people said.

One question I have is this: why would any company want to partner with a government-run company, whether it’s a PRC government-run company or a French government-run (which even that 15% stake gives the government functional control) company?

Another question I have goes back to that divvying of intellectual property:

Nissan also doesn’t want technology that it developed with Renault to be shared with Chinese automotive giant Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co, which is planning to take a stake in Renault’s gasoline-car business, the people said.

Why would the French government want to partner with the PRC government to produce what the French government represents to be a French car? That Zhejian Geely stake would give the PRC government access to both French and Nissan intellectual property and technology.

Another Reason to Move the Supply Chain

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This time for the Republic of China’s Foxconn, which among other things, assembles iPhones in a People’s Republic of China factory in Zhengzhou.

In Foxconn’s main Zhengzhou facility, the world’s biggest assembly site for Apple Inc’s iPhones, hundreds of thousands of workers have been placed under a closed-loop system for almost two weeks. They are largely shut off from the outside world, allowed only to move between their dorms or homes and the production lines.

The mainland Chinese workers are causing their own problems for Foxconn, also.

“It’s too dangerous to go to work,” a 21-year-old worker who has been confined to his dorm told The Wall Street Journal, saying that he was skeptical about the company’s claim that there was a low level of infections at the plant.

And

Some workers interviewed by the Journal said many colleagues had refused to go back to the production lines. Others had simply left, they said, sometimes abandoning their belongings.

And

Another Foxconn employee said most of his dozen-strong team of night-shift workers had either been taken to a quarantine facility or had refused to return to work. ….
“I don’t know who around me is a positive case,” said the worker, who has been confined to his dorm for a few days. “I’d be better off staying in the dorm.”

For good reasons or ill, the bottom line is that Foxconn cannot rely on its mainland collection of employees, much less the PRC government’s capricious responses to its Wuhan Virus situation.

Foxconn would be much better off to move its production/assembly facility back to the Republic of China, or to Vietnam, or to expand its nascent production/assembly facility in the US, or some combination of the three. The transition will be expensive, of course, but only in the short-term. Intermediate- and long-term, the company will be much better off, with a more reliable and stable work force, and so will Foxconn’s customers be.