A Startling Statistic at UCLA

Parents Forum
341

<p>“I think reparations is impractical because I think few people on the earth are interested in living honorably for the sake of honor.”</p>

<p>You should know that 18th Century Friends not only freed their slaves, but provided reparations going back four generations. In many cases, those who refused to go along were ridden out of their Meetings and communtiies. It is not in the least bit impractical, but the will to do it has to be there. </p>

<p>It’s interesting, but in my 56 years upon the earth, I have never heard a white person express embarrassment for profiting personally from the 10-generation gift of “affirmative action”.</p>

<p>For the record, I am NOT in favor of reparations. I think “leveling the playing field” – over three generations, and systemically - would be just fine. That is, over a period of 6 generations, the three past and the three next in the future - equal access to early education, K-12 (let the kids in Marin have the teachers and resources that those in East Oakland now have, and vice versa), college, health care access, redlining and greenlining of neighborhoods, bank policies, employment opportunities, tax “relief”, Social Security, the list could be much longer. Not forever, and not “affirmative action” - just leveling the playing field with a time-limited duration, only 60 years or so. </p>

<p>Start tomorrow. (fat chance.)</p>

342

<p>Althought saying “who were treated worse, the Africans or the Native Americans” is sort of simplistic, I think it bring up a worthwhile point. </p>

<p>But what about this collective guilt? Should those who weren’t a part of it share in it? How about others who were discriminated against equally in later years (for instance, signs that read “Irish need not apply”, Catholics, Jews). What about recent immigrants? What about those who I think are exempt from responsibility, as much as one can be? What about those who fought dirrectly against it? Maybe such thoughts wedge society, but is it really the fault of legal immigrants from 50 years ago that American slavery happened? Any person could certainly think “Humans did that and I am human, therefore I am capable of such acts,” but how does that make slavery different from the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide, to name a few atrocities?</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>What do you mean?</p>

343

<p>White folks, whether they arrived in the country in 1635 or 1945, have benefitted massively as a result of opportunities and resources denied to Black folks. It’s not even a matter of “choosing” whether to benefit - it’s just the way things work.</p>

<p>Let me give you a quick example. (I have so many!) Until only last year, for the past 70 years, the majority of Black men didn’t reach the age to collect Social Security. They worked for 40 years, at much lower-paying jobs, statistically much more dangerous jobs, and much more insecure jobs, but because of the lid on Social Security payments, paid a much higher proportion of their incomes (the same as millionaires) into a system from which they would never be able to collect. My mother, in contrast, will likely live to age 85-90, and started collecting at age 62. She doesn’t need the money particularly, as her husband worked at much higher paying jobs as did she (and is a millionaire), and payed a much lower proportion of her income into Social Security. Because she doesn’t need the money, she saves it, and reinvests it. Over 25 years, it is worth well over half a million dollars. Eventually she will give it to me and my brother, which we can use for bigger houses, rental properties, education for the grand kids, capital to start businesses, all things that the Black men who paid into the system will never be able to access. Of course, now is the time to raise the age for receiving Social Security benefits, as too many Black men are now in a position for the first time to receive them.</p>

<p>So what Social Security has represented is a GIANT wealth transfer program, from Black men, to my mother, to me, my children, and my grandchildren, and those who come after them.</p>

<p>Am I embarrassed? Hardly. In fact, because of the nature of system of affirmative action acting in my favor, most of the time I never even give it a second thought. I am more than willing to accept the transfer of funds from Black Americans to me that accrues even if I never owned a slave, and even if I immigrated to the country in 1960. I have a good deal going. I profit personally in very real ways from racism operating in 2006, let alone the 10 generations that came before, but I have been well trained not to think about it.</p>

<p>But do a thought experiment (it won’t happen, so just play it through in your mind): what if tomorrow, some King swooped down and said, "All right. We’ve done that for 70 years; now for the next 70, we are going to reverse the process, so that at the end of the 140 year period, things will be equal. How would that affect you, my mother, my children, my grandchildren, and those of Black Americans? Just leveling the playing field, mind you - no reparations, or anything like that. Then imagine - remember, it is just a thought experiment - how that would play out in housing, education, asset creation, employment, etc. What would it look like, feel like? Who would scream the loudest?</p>

344

<p>

Shoot. Its much much worse than this. They’ve been well trained to actually ridicule and blame me for not being like them. When I tell them racism is all around, thick, against blacks, they wonder why I am angry, and then whine about Booker T. Washington and how I need to find “success” like he did - which relatively speaking, is no success at all. Blacks are feeling this thing pressing down, down, down, just grinding them right into the dust, and yet America just whines about a little program that doesn’t even benefit blacks exclusively and that even many blacks must support by their taxes.</p>

345

<p>I think that one point that is being overlooked is that AA isn’t solely to help Blacks, it is to help the colleges as well. Whether or not you agree with it, colleges have come to believe that having a diverse student body is valuable - and that means more than URMs. While AA is a more systematic helping hand than the one that might favor other groups in admissions, it seems that many types of minority groups get a boost. Two years ago, Princeton’s Jewish population was listed at 10%, compared to 20% or more at nearly all of the other Ivies. Now, it is up to 14% - suggesting a conscious effort by the new Dean of Admissions to attract more Jewish students. Similarly, an Asian friend of mine had her application fee waived by Washington & Lee - since she wasn’t low-income, it seems that the predominantly white school was looking for some diversity. Some of my classmates started a facebook group joking that they were admitteed as part of our “broaden the artsy contingent initiative.” Regional minorities get a boost, in order to allow schools to brag that they have students from all 50 states and X number of countries. </p>

<p>Schools do what they have to to fill the gaps that would be left by a completely merit based admissions system. Now, truthfully I kind of doubt that Princeton was lowering their standards for Jews or W&L for Asians (my friend didn’t get in - it would have been quite a reach for her), whereas, just by the fact that there are smaller numbers of high-achieving blacks, it is more likely that they are making compromises to increase their number of URMs. However, my point is that it isn’t all about righting past wrongs (and, as others have mentioned, they aren’t that far in the past), but about what is best for the school and the other students as well. And, of course, there have always been exceptions made for athletes and the very wealthy and well-connected - which people don’t seem to complain about much.</p>

<p>It also seems to me that people are forgetting how much a URM would have to have achieved just to be eligible for AA. It isn’t as if the kid who walks around with a chip on his shoulder thinking that achieving is “acting white” is getting into a good college. At the very least, he’d have to graduate high school and stay out of trouble to go to any college -which, sadly, doesn’t always happen. And if he had just scraped by in high school, and gotten a 700 old SAT, he still wouldn’t be getting into a school much better than a community college, AA or not. The students who benefit have a record of achievement, and many of them are probably qualified for the school they wind up attending regardless of race. Although some are going to schools that they might not have ordinarily been accepted to, again, it isn’t as if they’re taking anyone off the street.</p>

346

<p>DRab:</p>

<p>

I don’t really see the point. If you take something from two people, you don’t ethically get to decide that what you took from person A is objectively worth more than what you took from person B. We may come up with some arbitrary valuation that we generally agree with, but if that valuation is forced, then it can by no means replace the real value the owners of the goods assign to them. The little Timex you stole from person A may be every bit as precious (or much more precious) as the Rolex you stole from person B. It is just best not to steal.</p>

<p>

I don’t really look at it as “collective guilt”. I don’t think we even need to try to blame modern day people for what happened in the past. We need, however, to realize that we are benefiting of lives that were stolen long ago, and that this theft and the continuing aftermath of it is still killing many of us today. We then need to take action to resolve these wrongs.</p>

347

<p>Mini:</p>

<p>

Yeah. I am well aware of the role and responses of The Friends regarding slavery. I think, however, they were exceptional people, motivated very strongly by religion to live honorably. I think reparations today are impractical (i.e. impossible) because the will to achieve them does not exist and will not exist, especially as the American population drifts continually away from meaningful knowledge of our history.</p>

<p>

I don’t think whites really understand just how tremendous their advantage has been for all these centuries. And they can’t relate to how all that stored up capital has added to the value of having white skin, so that even recent immigrants with white skin gain a great advantage over others in this country. Few people see this. Blacks feel it every single day of their lives.</p>

<p>I really don’t understand how YOU can see it so clearly as you obviously do. But I gotta tell ya, I am breathing a very big sigh of relief over here. You are showing me that it really is possible to bridge this gap. I’ve been hovering over the idea of just giving up for some time now.</p>

<p>If we could just get our country to see the thing as you see it, then I think most of this problem would evaporate. Vast numbers of blacks likely would not even care about the past or about reparations, or about Affirmative Action, or even about leveling the playing field in the way you are suggesting. It would probably be enough to them just to be able to know that starting right now, America is gonna start playing fair all across the board, that we are gonna do this thing in a way that you can trust me to be honorable and I can finally trust you. At that point, the black guy would likely be compelled to take better risks. He’d go ahead and try for such and such school. He’d care about doing his best, and sticking with the American Program. He’d interview for the job. He’d study hard all the time. He’d do as well or better than everyone else because he’d know America really is his country, that he is welcomed here, and that Americans are really gonna give him a legitimate shot at success, instead of just parading a few tokens in front of him and then blaming him for not being like them.</p>

<p>

Yeah. I am not for reparations either. I think your solution would be just fine too. But it ain’t gonna happen. Shoot. America can’t even see how it is connected to the destruction of blacks. As you point out, the advantages to whites and disadvantages against blacks here in America are legion. It is just everywhere. But it seems very many Americans are completely clueless about it, and it seems the rest just don’t care to see. </p>

<p>I am a simple man who believes in God. He comforts me, and that is just how I get by. I think that if we continue in this dishonor, God is gonna fix this stuff Himself, so that “the first shall be last and the last shall be first”.</p>

348

<p>Tourguide:</p>

<p>

Analogies are often tricky things. This one fails to capture what really happened with slavery and what really can be done. The fact is, everyone ought not agree simply with the passive assertion that “Smith got screwed”. They need to agree with the facts. Jones screwed Smith and now has something that by rights belongs to Smith. In slavery, America didn’t just cripple blacks. It took their lives and exploited them to build the America that exists today. Without that theft, there would be no America. It is all owed to the theft of life and energy that would otherwise have been devoted to the existence of that life. America still has the goods, and she is withholding them from the progeny of the people from whom she stole them.</p>

<p>

In other words, Smith is doomed because remember, Smith’s muscles have atrophied. He is shriveled up and has nothing left because Jones stole it all from him. The thing you are missing here is that after Jones stole Smith’s life, he gave its proceeds to his own kids and those who look like his kids. And they all got together to fashion a society that passed OFFICIAL LAW to deliberately deny Smith and Smith’s children any access to those proceeds. Jones and those who look like Jones continually invested the proceeds of Smith’s life so that they became very wealthy, while Smith and his kids suffered and fell into bitterness as a result. Smith is now shriveled up physically, and his progeny are shriveled up mentally, and it is because of the behavior of Jones, Jones’s children, and the carefree ignorance of those who look like Jones.</p>

<p>

Smith is atrophied, friend. He can’t do a thing but look up and see the Joneses reveling in all their ill-gotten strength. Smith can’t even properly nurture his kids, and as those kids grow they are embittered by it all. They don’t want Jones’s “penny here penny there” handout of a gym, knowing that Jones now sits in his mansion because of having stolen their father’s life. They are very bitter. They want what is due them. They want their father’s life and the proceeds of that life that Jones and his kids and those who look like them now enjoy dishonorably.</p>

<p>

Smith and his kids strongly suspect that these people’s empathy is really not genuine as long as they keep on holding on to the proceeds of Smith’s life, refusing to even acknowledge that they have taken it. At best the Joneses will passively agree that “Smith got screwed”, but none of them has the integrity to agree that “We screwed Smith” and that “we therefore owe Smith and his progeny the proceeds of Smith’s life”. I don’t exactly think this is empathy, however it might sound. It is something much much worse.</p>

349

<p>So Jone’s Jewish Catholic Irish Native American Asian American friend should join with Jones in the declaration “We screwed Smith?” How about blacks themselves? Or is their screwing themselves only a result of the “white” slavery? </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>And these things are related to racial affirmative actions? Show me the day when Jews get a boost in US or almost any countries colleges’ admissions because they represent so little of the US and World population, and I will give you a muzzuzah. Colleges looking for certain things in applicants- that is not racial Affirmative Action. Only when it’s about race, and students (of “historically underrepresented groups”) are given advantage in admissions because of their race. Wash and Lee could have been looking for another possible good student/source of income/person to reject and make themselves look better. Certainly they could have had your friend’s race in mind. Maybe that was at the forefront, who knows</p>

<p>It’s kind of old, but here’s a quotation. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.shmoozenet.com/jsps/stories/princeton.shtml[/url]”>http://www.shmoozenet.com/jsps/stories/princeton.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>

</p>

<p>I think many do complain about these things as well, although perhaps not as much, and I wouldn’t say “always” with regard to athletes. Are you talking exclusively about the US higher education system?</p>

350

<p>I’m for whatever will work. But I think we’ve demonstrated in this country and with our foreign aid programs, that turning over money and other resources to people does as much harm as good. It gets squandered or stolen enroute. Money is spent on useless things. You could give every black person in the USA a million bucks, and in 5 years we’d probably be back to square one, because it wouldn’t change their self-images, their self-expectations, their self-confidence. It would be like a gigantic welfare payout, helping briefly with the symptoms, but worsening the disease because it would give them EVEN LESS incentive to catch up with whites and Asians with regards to studying, establishing careers, & handling money responsibly.</p>

<p>Quit trying to figure out solutions that don’t require Mr. Smith (who’s not anywhere near as crippled as you say he is) to do 100% of the lifting (as unfair as it is). My late father used to tell me that I will get by in the real world a lot better if I banished the word “fair” from my vocabulary. Bet your money on fairness and you will usually lose.</p>

351

<p>^somebody needs to crank up the airconditioner a notch,…</p>

<p>Happy Father’s Day, Dross and others. The understanding among devoted fathers is a greater bond than race,…</p>

352

<p>I’ll say it again, even though I wonder if anyone’s listening:</p>

<p>Since the University of California with its several campuses has a <em>public</em> <em>mission</em> to educate the “U.C.-eligible” students within its State, the fact of low acceptance/enrollment of minorities at one of its finer campuses is evidence of lack of (competitive) eligibility for that very competitive campus, more than anything else. “Eligible” is just a technical synonym for “qualified.” </p>

<p>The “startling statistic” is the rate of acceptance to very competitive upper-tier Privates (with standards at least as high as UCLA), by well-qualified minorities from many States other than California, versus CA minority enrollment numbers at one of the 2 flagships with a stated mission to its residents. It speaks to a startling public educational system – in its misappropriation of funding & its unwise attempts to centralize all decisions & to make politically-driven choices. It speaks to a startling absence of available in-home assistance for those minorities. (Functional illiteracy – yes, even among native speakers.)</p>

<p>Whether the under-education of minorities (leading to the under-education of their children) continues to be a legacy of much earlier slavery (which denied education) is not a discussion I want to join in right now, although I’m sure it’s an important point. (Remember that these minorities include the rural poor from Mexico & other countries south of our border, who are not direct descendents of U.S.-sanctioned slavery, & are here without legal status.)</p>

<p>We only have Now. Pouring money into the education of children from illiterate & under-literate homes – both African-American & Latino – will not in itself reverse the Startling Statistic at UCLA, if those efforts are limited to the K-12 classrooms. Literacy partnerships between A-Am’n <em>communities</em> and educational institutions, from local to State, would help. However, it’s important to say – even though I don’t want to further derail the opening post – that even those efforts will be crippled if immigration into the State of CA is not addressed. Population shifts have enormously compromised black communities in areas where their numbers have been superceded by an influx of illiterate immigrants. It has added merely another factor of illiteracy, shifting the official priorities from functional literacy of native speakers to technical literacy of ESL speakers. (i.e., priorities mandated by the State) This is one reason for the self-chosen segmentation of so many black communities from public site into public charter site schools, where the priorities are not solely controlled by Sacramento, where the daily operation is contract-based vs. regulation-based (meaning, for one thing, you’re history if you’re badly behaved or don’t do your work), where administrative staffing is often bare-bones, & where the emphasis is the quality of the teaching, the demands of the learning, & the responsibilities of the home in this dynamic.</p>

<p>…And thank you to the previous poster for remembering a Happy Father’s Day to all of the dedicated fathers on CC, especially Dross, one of our pre-eminent Dads who’s more than earned his Day.</p>

353

<p>Drab:</p>

<p>

Of course not. They should only admit the facts: “My friends, the Joneses, screwed Smith and now I am enjoying the proceeds of that theft”.</p>

<p>

They did not screw themselves. We can’t legitimately combine together as one people the Africans who sold Africans to whites because those Africans saw themselves as foreigners to each other. They were of different tribes and spoke different languages. Whites simply exploited these differences. It was only after American slavery that blacks here generally began to see themselves as a single group. Also, whites exploited another critical difference between themselves and the Africans, and that is the perception and definition of slavery and ownership.</p>

<p>As I have said, the real problem here is not slavery in itself. It is the racial component of slavery and the abuse blacks have incurred because of it. THAT is what stole away the lives of blacks in America. Slavery in Africa was quite a bit different. Slaves could marry, they could own goods, buy homes, have children who were themselves free. They could even marry within the ethnicity of their enslavement. And the work was nowhere near as destructive since their agricultural system was much smaller and subsistence based. Most importantly, they were released. Slavery in Africa was a term punishment of war. It did not steal the entire life and dignity of a human in the same way European slavery did. When they were sold into slavery to whites, Africans had no idea of the horror they were entering. Olaudah Equiano indicates this in a fascinating work he produced recounting his days as a newly sold slave boy. He said when aboard ship, he asked someone what was going on and that they told him he was going to be sent to work. Upon hearing this, he thought ‘Oh. Well this is no problem then’. But when the whites began to mistreat him, he was shocked because he had never experienced anything like it.</p>

<p>We can try to excuse the carnage of the soul we have created here. But there are no excuses. Millions of blacks living today are feeling a great sense of loss, and many of them have little or no faith to sustain them here. They can’t have faith in a people who took from them, who enjoyed the proceeds of the theft, who passed those proceeds on to others, denying blacks access to it, to education, and to freedom, who then ridiculed blacks for having nothing, who still live in a society that takes from and crushes blacks, and who can’t even admit what happened.</p>

354

<p>Tourguide:</p>

<p>

I think this is your strongest argument. I think there is something to it, though I am not yet sure how much there is. It is cloudy for me because there are so many other things in the mix here that are patently destructive and that relative few Americans are able or willing to see. So my inclination is to maintain the status quo because I can’t trust America to actually do anything that will really help – especially not as long as Neo-nazis and Klansmen lobby hard for the solution you claim is so good for us.</p>

<p>

Yeah. This may be true. I don’t know or have enough confidence in it to take a position on it. But I do strongly suspect that the things you have mentioned are at the heart of the problem and that they are missing in large portions of black people. I do not think, however, that throwing these people to the wolves and ignoring them is going to strengthen them. America can be vicious when it comes to blacks. Were America to give blacks a million bucks, in 5 years it won’t even have its full value because America would have stolen much of it by inflation. That means blacks are going to have to be educated enough on finance to find ways to keep value because the country is after their value. So we ought not just look at solutions that involve throwing around money.</p>

<p>

Again, I think this is your best argument. I am still thinking about it. I think the solution may involve some of the things I have mentioned in another post. But it will take a lot of time, patience and thought to make it work. You can’t make the half-hearted attempts America has made, whining and complaining every step of the way about it, and then expect it to really do what you are trying to do. It is a devastating problem.</p>

<p>

Smith is doomed, friend. I say he is doomed because all you are willing to do is throw him a gym from afar and yell “Heal Thyself!”. Smith can’t get up and then start on the road to recovery with muscles that are atrophied. He is a goner, unless you are willing to come alongside him, and every single day help him get on the apparatus, help keep him from falling off, so that he can start pushing, initially ever so slightly, eventually to gain enough strength to stand on his own. Now were I Jones, a friend or child of Jones, there is just no way I would not get in there real close to Smith and do exactly this. But I don’t have a lot of faith about the Joneses and their friends because so far, all they can think to do is throw gyms at people.</p>

<p>So, I am thinking maybe there is hope for a few of Smith’s kids. Those kids have the strength of body, but they have no strength of spirit to try to use those bodies. Since in every group you will have some who are a little more capable than others, I am thinking that we might be able to help some of them, as they question their bitterness enough to try lifting on their own. But they at least need a gym or something to get them started. But too many Joneses are whining about even that. They claim that since they didn’t cause Smith’s difficulties, they ought not even have to give Smith’s kids a gym and they are threatening to take it away.</p>

<p>

Well that is probably good advice. I sure live by it because I have seen too much unfairness in this world to expect people to have it. But I am able to work without fairness because I have hope in the future. I’m just gonna keep hanging in there no matter what. It is just a done deal. But many people have very little hope or even none at all. And I am talking about people of all races here. These folks are so lost in the pit of their minds that our standing above them, preaching stuff about “bootstraps” and ‘banishing fairness’ and ‘doing the lifting yourself’ is as empty to them of truth as a Twinkie is empty of nutrients.</p>

355

<p>Affirmative Action just like welfare, promotes laziness, promotes entitlement mentality, promotes ‘chip on shoulder’ mind set, and has polarizing effect on campuses and work place.</p>

<p>Unless black community re-invents itself - works from within, they will never move ahead. Look around you, the latest refugee community - the vietnames have surpassed them. Latinos will pretty soon move ahead.</p>

356

<p>

Happy Father’s Day rorosen. Its been a wonderful time. And now I have been temporarily banished to my computer as my kids prepare something. This morning my littlest daughter gleefully gave me a present, challenging me to guess what it was. I asked her to tell me, and she said “No!” Almost unable to contain her excitement, she challenged me to guess again, saying “I won’t tell you, but its blue, and its a shirt!”</p>

<p>LOL.</p>

357

<p>"“I won’t tell you, but its blue, and its a shirt!”</p>

<p>kids say the cutest things and that make everything worthwhile.</p>

358

<p>Simba:</p>

<p>It’s not fair to compare Vietnamese with African-Americans and Hispanics. Vietnam adopted the Chinese Confucian exams centuries ago.Vietnamese came to this country with very different backgrounds. Many were well-educated middle class folks before emigrating. Even if they do not speak English, they are able to support their children in school, and their community also strongly values education. In a sense, they are more akin to Jews who came to this country in WWII than to Latin Americans, or, of course, enslaved Africans.
Hispanics come largely from poorer and less educated background. In our community, they actually lag behind African-Americans in terms of achievement.</p>

359

<p>Marite:</p>

<p>No it is fair to compare the general work ethics of many different cultures. Often the immigrants do not know the ‘tricks’ of the welfare system and hence work very hard to support themselves. Often, it is the matter of pride about not accepting charity. </p>

<p>Do they work hard? yes they do. The jobs they work are low paying, physically back breaking and long hours. Many became shrimp fishermen, many work behing the counters of convinience stores, many work and now own dry cleaning places (almost 100% in Houston), many became nail polishers, barbers and lawn cutters. And they charge rock bottom prices. In Houston you can have pants dry cleaned for a $1, average sized lawn mowed for about $20. Men also can get a hair cut for $2.99.</p>

<p>And they have fantastic community support which values education. The point I am making is that it is not solely the support or hand outs from the System that is necessary to bring yourself up. You also have to do your part. Whinning about past and trying to exploit ‘White Guilt’ is not going to solve the problem.</p>

360

<p>The character of people who were higher status in their home country, who then became workers working for little pay is very telling.
My own brother in law- took handouts from his relatives and from his church for several years, because he was determined to find a job that was the “status” he felt he deserved.</p>

<p>As we have read on other threads- African americans have mixed feelings, sometimes quite strong, about immigrants that are “taking their jobs”. BUt immigrants can’t take a job you already have.
There is no shame in being a garbage collector or working retail, why is working hard something to be embarrased about?</p>