Any statistics to show that minorities due worse in college?

Applying to College
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<p>sybbie,</p>

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<p>I’m not a big fan of historical revisionism.</p>

<p>In the book, Where Do We Go From Here, Dr. King wrote “A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis.” That sounds oddly like a racial preference.</p>

<p>In an interview, he stated “If a city has a 30% Negro population, then it is logical to assume that Negroes should have at least 30% of the jobs in any particular company, and jobs in all categories rather than only in menial areas.” Hmm, isn’t that what we call a quota?</p>

<p>In the book, Why We Can’t Wait, Dr. King wrote “No amount of gold could provide an adequate compensation for the exploitation and humiliation of the Negro in America down through the centuries…Yet a price can be placed on unpaid wages…The payment should be in the form of a massive program by the government of special, compensatory measures which could be regarded as a settlement in accordance with the accepted practice of common law.” A price? Compensatory measures? Woah, woah, woah! Isn’t he talking about reparations?</p>

<p>sybbie, I disagree that I am “really out of touch.”</p>

<p>Dr. King supported racial preferences, quotas, and reparations. He was an honest and just man, and he made no bones about his beliefs. That type of candor and frankness is noticeably absent from today’s “diversity” advocates.</p>

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<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>

<p>-The third should still be considered as well if diversity is in the stated goal. You could just as easily say that only socioeconomic and race should be considered as they can accomplish diversity w/o having to look at where you live which is dependant on where your parents lived.</p>

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<p>Despite what the popular press and various guidebooks would suggest, gaining
admissions to college is not equivalent to finding your place on the food chain.
If one must use a biological metaphor, a more appropriate analogy would be
finding your niche in an ecosystem. Different institutions aspire to serve different
educational needs, and different students will have their educational needs
served best by different types of colleges. A particular institution’s decision of
whom and how to admit—its admission model if you will—must be related to
the societal role that it elects to play. Often the interpretation of this role, however
vaguely stated, is found in the mission statement required by the institution’s
accreditation agency. The founders and trustees of colleges and universities
are free to define their societal role in different ways. For example, a land grant
institution has a different role to play than does a conservatory of music, and
the mission of a community college differs from that of an Ivy League college or
a flagship public university. The range of missions, and their associated philosophical
perspectives on who should be admitted, is broad but not infinite.</p>

<p>Taken from “Towards A Taxonomy of the Admissions Decision Making Process.”</p>

<p>No need for us psuedo-pundits to decide what is meritorious and who best defines worthiness. It’s constantly being re-evaluated. As I’ve alluded to earlier, philosophically, AdComs see this as a fluid situation and it varies from institution to institution. Many of us are intrenched in our positions of thought but ultimately, the school administrators, the gatekeepers if you will, decide who is worthy based on their particular institutional “needs” and standards. Those needs could be urms, gender related, religious, geographical, athletic and socio-economic. A person’s race is a consideration and justifiably so, in taking a holistic view in admissions and how it will serve the mission of the college, the individual and society at large.</p>

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Fab.
So if the “diversity” advocates were more forthright, more direct, less politically correct, would you respect their position more but ultimately STILL disagree? </p>

<p>You’ve illustrated Dr. King’s position well, yet I tend to believe if you had the opportunity, you would say to him, Dr.King, I believe you’re sincere, but sincerely wrong.</p>

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<p>Sure, I could just as easily say that. But, I’m not going to say that because I believe that ending discrimination overrides promoting diversity.</p>

<p>Diversity can and should be promoted but not at the expense of instating discrimination.</p>

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<p>madville,</p>

<p>If the “diversity” advocates were more forthright, more direct, and less keen on maintaining a politically correct aura, then I would absolutely respect their position more. I would still ultimately disagree, but I would not look down upon them. I would say, “Well, I appreciate your honesty and I respect your conviction, but I disagree.”</p>

<p>If I had the opportunity, I would say to Dr. King, “I believe you’re sincere, but I do not agree with all of your points.” I don’t see myself being so brash.</p>

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<p>Fab and others who are opposed to race based admission considerations. </p>

<p>Briefly, what would you change from the current application of AA as it applies to urm’s? As you see it, how do you make signifcant inroads to the various discrepancies across the board that affects urms, and how long would you speculate it to begin make more significant changes for the betterment of urms than the the way AA is implemented now? Lastly, do you honestly believe there would better immediate outcomes for urms than what we have now?
Not saying this is the situation with most posters on this subject, but it’s sometimes easier to lodge complaints than to offer up solutions.</p>

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<h2>madville: No need for us psuedo-pundits to decide what is meritorious and who best defines worthiness. It’s constantly being re-evaluated. As I’ve alluded to earlier, philosophically, AdComs see this as a fluid situation and it varies from institution to institution.</h2>

<p>Madville, you have a much higher opinion of university administrations than I do. I used to share your belief in the nobility of the ivory tower before I actually went to college and saw how they really made decisions up close. (I’m not talking about AA here or even admissions decisions, here.) They may be acting in line with your beliefs in the case of AA, but it’s not necessarily because they share your beliefs and certainly not the result of constant re-evaluation of their beliefs. They may think a lot about their decisions, but it’s more of thinking what would please the various factions of the alumni base they raise money from and/or the government they get federal subsidies from. University administrators are just as much politicians as the people in Congress.</p>

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<p>madville,</p>

<p>I would revert to the original focus of affirmative action, namely, making sure that no one is either discriminated against or discriminated for based on race, gender, ethnicity, national origin, religion, and so forth.</p>

<p>Thus, all students, including those labeled “under-represented,” would be treated without regard to the aforementioned factors during the college admissions process.</p>

<p>To make significant inroads to the various discrepancies that affect “under-represented” minorities, such as being consistently tracked into less-demanding high school course tracks, I would try to determine why these phenomena occur. In the example I mentioned, is it because guidance counselors presume that a student should be in technical-prep without asking the student? If this is so, then the guidance counselors need to do a better job explaining the various course tracks to incoming freshmen. They need to offer the same explanations to all families. They should not presume anything. Instead, they should ask the student and his parents what they are interested in (e.g. technical prep, college prep, AP, etc). In addition, we must figure out exactly what is causing the unequal educational opportunities and address these directly. Is it comically out-of-date textbooks? Fund the school’s purchase of new ones. Is it an understaffed guidance department? Hire more staff. Lack of AP classes? Attract certified teachers and certify teachers who are willing to teach the courses.</p>

<p>If we could actually spend the time and hard work to address the problems at their roots, then I would expect to see significant change in less than twenty years.</p>

<p>You say “immediate outcomes.” No, I do not believe that if we started tackling the problems tomorrow, then improvements would happen instantaneously. But, I believe they would happen gradually at a pace that is faster than what we currently are familiar with.</p>

<p>More money isn’t the answer. I could dump endless sums of money into the hands of administration and not see a single iota of student improvement. It’s how we use this money. We should eschew novelties in favor of concrete reforms. Instead of convincing the school to switch to 4X4 block, why not convince the school to add or strengthen an AP program? The list goes on.</p>

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<h2>more about meritocracy and AA…</h2>

<p>Well, first of all, there are ways to argue for racial and socioeconomic AA under a strict meritocracy, but you must accept several assumptions first. By merit here, I will take the simplest definition as some linear combination of talent and work ethic. Talent and work ethic will be judged by one’s high school accomplishments in context of the resources they had to use.</p>

<p>Socioeconomic AA (evaluating people more favorably if they come from households with less income) can be justified with the following logic: If they come from households with less money, they might not have the money for things like SAT prep or summer classes at a college. They also might have to hold a job to support their family and/or future education. One could reason that in the long run a person from a lower income household with a 2100 SAT score would be expected to outperform someone from a high income household who has a 2200 SAT score. So in socioeconomic AA, you would still be selecting for talent and work ethic (i.e., merit) even though you may not take the most accomplished people in the absolute sense. To use an extreme analogy, it’s sort of like judging for athleticism a bike race when some people have the money to buy motors for their bikes. You might not take the best times necessarily. </p>

<p>Racial AA could be argued for in a similar manner. In this case, you would have to argue that racism rather than family income have been a hindering factor on a applicant’s accomplishments. If you assume that teachers may have a subconscious bias against students of a certain ethnicity, then you may be justified in being more forgiving when judging recommendations for a URM. The assumption you would be using is that a URM could a worse recommendation than a non-URM even with the same performance just because of the teacher’s bias against them. The financial component of URM’s being held back by past discrimination making their households poorer would be accounted for by socioeconomic AA. So in this case as well, you could still give a boost to URM applicants while selecting strictly for merit. However, it is the assumption that race is an obstacle for current-day high school students where people disagree. Also, people disagree about how much an obstacle it is (and therefore how much of a boost URM’s should get.</p>

<p>In summary, there are arguments for AA under a strict meritocracy (as I’ve detailed above), but these are not related to arguments stemming from the university’s desire to assemble a diverse class for the sake of the university experience. In other words, they aren’t lowering the bar for the poor student because they think he would lend an interesting perspective to classroom discussions because of his low family income, they are lowering the bar because they think his accomplishments were hindered by his family’s income.</p>

<p>BTW, I’m glad Tyler and others agree that skin color should not be considered a “merit” in itself. Even though Dr. King strongly supported AA, in my humble opinion he would find the notion of skin color being equated to merit as extremely offensive.</p>

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<p>Not necessarily, but better knowing how the “game” is played and understanding the players makes positioning oneself easier and gives you the ability to mentally prepare for certain outcomes positively and otherwise.</p>

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<p>My biggest problem with AA opponents is that they aren’t passionate about what they’re saying. They say that they strongly oppose AA because it is discrimination, yet when they have the choice to apply to a school that “discriminates” they apply there anyway. Why? Because they don’t really care that much. </p>

<p>If people really felt as strongly as they said they do and truly felt that AA was as wrong as they say, then the top students wouldn’t be applying to those top universities, and they wouldn’t be the top universities anymore. </p>

<p>Because they aren’t willing to sacrifice anything for a change it only leads me to believe that they don’t oppose the principles of AA, they just don’t want it to affect them. </p>

<p>I’m not sure whether or not fabrizio is one of those people. </p>

<p>Fabrizio, if you had the chance to apply to princeton with strong stats, would you? despite the fact that princeton practices AA very heavily.</p>

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<p>I think an easier way is to just vote down affirmative action wherever it comes up for a vote.</p>

314

<p>Tyler, that doesn’t make any sense. If Asians stopped accepting positions at top schools, then they would have even less say in the way things are done. Would it have made sense for Althea Gibson to refuse to play Wimbledon as a protest against discrimination? No, it was better to fight her way into the tournament despite discrimination. After she won Wimbledon, she could more easily voice her complaints and was harder to ignore. I also think that Juan Li had more credibility because he was a Yale student rather than someone from a state school. Even though he could claim he got into a couple of top 5 schools, people could more easily depict his complaint as purely sour grapes.</p>

<p>No one should mess up their career as a protest. BTW, almost all universities discriminate against Asians, so does that mean they should sacrifice and turn down all these universities? So even if it may not be the right environment for them, they basically have to go to UC-Berkeley. Also, I will submit that Juan Li has made a sacrifice by filing that complaint. He’s become a lightning rod for criticism. He could have just ignored what happened. He’s on his way to a Yale degree–the smart move for his career would have been just to keep his mouth shut.</p>

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<p>It makes a LOT of sense. If Harvard started offering free on-campus abortions then I’m sure that the anti-abortion crowd would stop applying there because they truly believe abortion is wrong.</p>

<p>The fact that AA does not affect application to top schools only shows that people do not REALLY care that AA continues, it’s just annoying to them. If the supreme court announced that AA was legal for another 30 years, people would be mad for a second, then they wouldn’t care. </p>

<p>That’s the problem when AA comes up for a vote. People vote it down without looking at the big picture simply because it’s annoying to them. </p>

<p>On a side note: Jian lee is a ■■■■■■■■■, he sued because he’s an arrogant prick who believes that his 2400 SAT score should have made him a shoe-in any where. And he did, in fact, fit the stereotype of the way to common Asian nerd. And when a university builds a class based around diversity, admitting every Asian nerd that comes along doesn’t help.</p>

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<p>Easier for whom? And easy in what respect? Nothing worth having comes easy. On the state level I can forsee some compromises, but being upheld on the private level. The recent Michigan law school figures show how decimated the minority numbers are. Hardly progress if you are an urm.</p>

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<p>Easier for AA-opponents. Better than sacrificing their futures to make a very very minute statement like Tyler was suggesting. “You’re not passionate about your views unless you boycott all top colleges” lol</p>

<p>I think a more interesting experiment is for all those URMs who claim that AA doesn’t give that much of a boost to not check their race on their applications. Then, we can see how much of a boost AA really is ;)</p>

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<p>If a urm is opposed to AA, then i believe that they shouldn’t check their race on their application. Then they can say that AA had no affect on them.</p>

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<h2>On a side note: Jian lee is a ■■■■■■■■■, he sued because he’s an arrogant prick who believes that his 2400 SAT score should have made him a shoe-in any where. And he did, in fact, fit the stereotype of the way to common Asian nerd. And when a university builds a class based around diversity, admitting every Asian nerd that comes along doesn’t help.</h2>

<p>So I guess you don’t give him credit for being a community activist LOL!!!</p>

<p>The Asian stereotype is of a person who keeps their head down and works and never says anything. Never makes any waves…Well, here we have a case where someone breaks that stereotype. </p>

<p>And BTW, he didn’t sue. He filed a complaint based on a Princeton study that basically said Asians were held a higher standard. The complaint itself said nothing to do with his particular case, although I’m sure it was a motivation. Perhaps it’s reported in the news that way, but that’s not what happened.</p>

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<p>I agree, collegealum314. Just as culturally, blacks are never taught the importance of education, the Asian culture teaches this “put your head down and just do your work” mentality. The problem is that blacks have advocates and affirmative action. Asians have very few advocates because they make up a small percentage of the population and are not as politically powerful as other minorities. </p>

<p>We were looking at racially-motivated crime against Asian Americans in my Asian American Studies class at Cornell and it’s pretty disgusting the reactions of these people. Instead of reporting the crime, they simply work overtime to pay for the stuff that was stolen or whatever. Consequently, burglars keep targeting Asian Americans because they never stand up for themselves. Regardless of my views on AA, I’m glad to see Jian Lee stand up for what he believes in.</p>