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</p>
<p>Certainly those who drop out aren’t qualified?</p>
<p>I love to watch AA opponents walk into the trap of using martin luther king to support them. King said himself that black people were going to need aide in catching up to whites in society as a result of being set back by discrimination. King SUPPORTED AA.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the dictionary definition of merit does not support your points. at all. Because it supports the point that it is impossible to make absolute distinctions on who is more meritorious.</p>
<p>“certainly those who drop out aren’t qualified?”
-Really? Are you really that ignorant to think that that is the only reason people drop out? At the Ivies that isn’t even the most common reason.</p>
<p>If racial/socioeconomic/geographical diversity is important to you in a university, then go to a college that builds it’s class to include those aspects.
If not, don’t, but people have the right to attend such a university and the university has the right to build the class it thinks and can justify is best.</p>
<p>Tyler, you lost the subtelty of my post. I wasn’t saying that Martin Luther King wouldn’t support AA. I was saying that his words imply that he felt the words “character” and “skin color” had different meanings/definitions. </p>
<p>kk19 was asserting that you could define merit as skin color or race.</p>
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</p>
<p>kk19131,</p>
<p>In my post 214, I listed the following as examples of merit:</p>
<ol>
<li>High test scores</li>
<li>Good grades in difficult courses (e.g. AP, IB, university)</li>
<li>Well-written essays</li>
<li>Top scores at mathematics contests, science contests, and so forth.</li>
<li>Debate and oratory prowess</li>
</ol>
<p>Please explain why these five do not constitute the basis of ones deserts. Please explain why these are not praiseworthy quality[ies]. Please explain why these are not examples of achievement.</p>
<p>What kills me about everyone wanting to quote Dr. King is how the quote is conveniently taken out of context or they fail to remember the circumstances under which Dr. King felt the need to verbalize his dream.</p>
<p>So a breif reminder:</p>
<p>What Dr. King actually said:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So I think if you are going to quote, quote it all because Dr. King’s vision of his children not being judged by the color of their skin (because the color of their skin did not grant them the same access as whites) quote it correctly.
Here in 2007, there are still parts of Dr. King’s dream that has not yet come to fuition.</p>
<p>^^his argument seems to be that if you could hypothetically find a person that would praise or reward a certain quality, then it is “praiseworthy” and therefore it is a “merit.” So now skin color could be a “merit.”</p>
<p>Seems pretty loopy to me…</p>
<p>“kk19 was asserting that you could define merit as skin color or race.”</p>
<p>-I’m saying that merit is more subjective than anything… It changes with the person. Can ‘race’ make someone meritorious of something? Sure, why not? Can economic status- yep, that too. Pretty much anything can be viewed in the eyes of some as ‘merit’ and not in the eyes of others. All I’m trying to convey is that people throw around the idea of ‘merit’ like there’s some standard by which colleges admit people- there is not- the idea of ‘merit’ changes from place to place.</p>
<p>Tyler,</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>There is no trap. Dr. King supported racial preferences, quotas, and reparations. He was honest in what he supported. He did not fluff his speeches with feel-good words like “diversity” and “inclusion.”</p>
<p>In addition to his support of those policies, he advocated a world where people would be judged based on their character, not their skin color.</p>
<p>Also, Tyler, you have not responded to my question as to whether you’d be willing to support a ban on racial preferences since you believe that they are distinct from affirmative action.</p>
<p>sybbie, did you read my post at all?</p>
<p>All i said was that skin color and merit are not the same thing. There are reasons for AA, but saying that you could define skin color as a “merit” is not one of them. It does a disservice to AA proponents to support this nonsense.</p>
<p>"his argument seems to be that if you could hypothetically find a person that would praise or reward a certain quality, then it is “praiseworthy” and therefore it is a “merit.” So now skin color could be a “merit.”</p>
<p>Seems pretty loopy to me…"</p>
<p>And that is your right to believe. But it’s little more than far fetched to say that everyone would- or even should find certain things commonly meritorious.</p>
<ol>
<li>High test scores</li>
<li>Good grades in difficult courses (e.g. AP, IB, university)</li>
<li>Well-written essays</li>
<li>Top scores at mathematics contests, science contests, and so forth.</li>
<li>Debate and oratory prowess</li>
</ol>
<p>Do I think these things are ‘merit’… Sure I do. Does that mean that these are the ONLY things that can constitute merit? Of course not.</p>
<p>If you want to say that colleges should limit their admissions process to the previously mentioned items, then fine say it. But don’t throw around the word ‘merit’ like it means the same thing to everyone. This is all I am trying to say.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>you are really out of touch with this statement. At the time it was not even remotely about racial preferences, quotas or reparations. It was about basic civil liberities (the right to vote, equal access to education, etc).</p>
<p>Yeah, maybe he had a preference to not be lynched on a dark back alley in the south, or maybe have a cross burned in front of his house or a have a cocktail thrown through his window. Maybe he was “seeking preferences” when he wanted to be able to enter the bus through the front door, not have to sleep in segregated hotels, enter the store throug the back door or drink from separate water fountains.</p>
<p>With this I am formally checking out of this thread as I already have enough grey hair and it is not my job to change the mind of the culturally encapsulated and those who are so entrenched in a postion (regardless of their lack of knowledge or understanding). It also leaves me scratching my head as to why people decry the very same system that helped to give their family a leg up Maybe you should research the numbers to how many asians or international students (with out really deep pockets) attended the UC (especially Cal and UCLA), and the elites before affirmative action.</p>
<p>I’ve said this whole time that i would NOT support a ban on racial preferences because i believe that it would intefere with the colleges ability to build an ideal class because i believe racial diversity is important. </p>
<p>I would find a ban on such preferences to be completely unjustified if it didn’t also ban socioeconomic, geographic, and gender preferences and changed them to outreach programs. instead.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’ll concede the minor error. What I meant to say was, certainly some of those who drop out aren’t qualified?</p>
<p>Of course not everybody drops out because of their underachieving performance. Take Bill Gates for example.</p>
<p>But what about those who do drop out strictly because they couldn’t handle the college? Are you going to choose to ignore those cases? Could you say that those cases are unequivocally, qualified to take on the education?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Hey, I didn’t invoke the dictionary definition. But care to back up your hollow claims?</p>
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</p>
<p>Maybe not absolute, but it seems to me that the definition supports a certain distinction of merit:</p>
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</p>
<p>Certainly, a person with rainbow suspenders with low academic achievement would NOT be defined was meritorious. That was the point I was making.</p>
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</p>
<p>Universities certainly have the right to build their classes the way they want. Likewise, we certainly have the right to voice ourselves.</p>
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</p>
<p>Couldn’t help my self. That is as great thing that colleges value freedom of thought and perspectives and many will come from people who are different from you.</p>
<p>However, if you find the manner that a college (especially a private one) chooses to admit a class so egregious, don’t apply to or attend that school. But you won’t see any major decrease of applications any time soon.</p>
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</p>
<p>sybbie, this surprises me coming from you since you usually have a lot of information to share. </p>
<p>Certainly the Jews don’t owe to any “system” that helped to give them a leg up. I think it’s awfully presumptuous to compare Asians to defined URMs (I’m not sure if that’s what you’re doing). According to Dan Golden, Asians are the “New Jews.”</p>
<p>And I am well aware that Asians occupy a relatively large class space at top-tier colleges. However, I believe in things like justice and fairness. I also don’t see as much value in the racial diversity that happens right now. Well-off African Americans reap the benefits of such policies, and I don’t think that’s fair to all my black “brothas” out there from Georgia who worked VERY hard in high school.</p>
<p>“However, if you find the manner that a college (especially a private one) chooses to admit a class so egregious, don’t apply to or attend that school. But you won’t see any major decrease of applications any time soon.”</p>
<p>-Much along the lines of my entire point of being in this thread. If you think that a (private college) picks its students incorrectly… go somewhere else. There is no shortage of colleges in this country, and all of them most certainly don’t have the same way of admitting people. If you don’t like schools that have admissions programs that include race as a factor, go to a school that doesn’t </p>
<p>I’m gone… honestly this time.</p>
<p>kk19131,</p>
<p>I strongly disagree that skin color can be considered a merit. Segregation and racial supremacy originate from this belief.</p>
<p>Your statement “…at least it’s backed up by actual dictionaries” seemed to indicate that the examples I listed of merit were not supported by your definition.</p>
<p>I never intended for my list to be exhaustive, and I never hinted that it was.</p>
<p>i agree with that fabrizio, skin color can not be considered a merit. But i also believe that neither can socioeconomic status, geographical location, or gender.</p>
<p>sybbie,</p>
<p>I do not believe that I have taken Dr. Kings words out of context.</p>
<p>There are still parts of his dream that have not been realized. Yet, there are also parts that have been realized.</p>
<p>Its illegal now to deny a person a room at a hotel because of his skin color.</p>
<p>The descendants of slaves and slave owners sit together in school buses. They use the same locker room after football practice. They stand next to each other during graduation ceremonies. The days of forced separation are long gone.</p>
<p>Governor George Wallace tempered his segregationist creed after the Civil Rights Movement. And, today, children of all walks of life can play together on the playground. They can all go to amusement parks.</p>
<p>Things have changed. Many things still have to be improved, but you write as if nothing has changed. That could not be further from the truth.</p>
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</p>
<p>I don’t think these are merits, either.</p>
<p>I do, however, believe the first two can be considered if diversity is still the stated goal of many institutions. These can result in diversity without looking at race.</p>