<p>
.</p>
<p>You know Fab, this is an admirable statement. I think you are way ahead of most people with this thought. I think that someday hopefully, we will get to a place where racial classifications don’t matter. Unfortunately for now, they do. We are making progress though. Real progress. My parents see race very differently than I do and my children see it differently still. IMO AA has helped progress not hurt it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s very possible that Asians fixate on “HYPSM et al,” to quote Pizzagirl. But if there’s “ample evidence” supporting that, I’d like to know what it is.</p>
<p>mokusatsu used the Inside Higher Ed article you think is weak as “ample evidence.” Pizzagirl pointed to CC threads. So what is this? The source becomes strong for your claim but remains weak for mine? Is this another one of your “You have to prove your claims beyond the shadow of a doubt, but I can say ‘it’s obvious’”?</p>
<p>Fact is, Asians are “overrepresented” everywhere. The “et al” portion of Pizzagirl’s remark encompasses an additional 25 to 35 schools and with few exceptions, Asians are “overrepresented” in all of them.</p>
<p>I’ve been repeatedly told that 40 is not broad, and that’s fine. All I ask is that you pick a better number for broad. (And don’t say 3,000. Pick a number greater than 40 but less than 3,000.)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You’ll get an answer, but it won’t be “yes or no.” Elite schools may not be. I never said the Inside Higher Ed article was enough to say “yes.” But it is enough to be suspicious, though even that is too much for you.</p>
<p>Maybe nobody ever said anything bad about Asians; Rachel Cederberg just made them up to convince the Asian parents in her audience to apply to other schools, including hers. Maybe.</p>
<p>What do I know? I put my money where my mouth is. I changed my surname, and I declined to self-identify. I do not regret my decision. Speaking of which, do you have anything against my suggestion to Asian high schoolers that if they feel suspicious, they are welcome to decline self-identification?</p>
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</p>
<p><em>Sigh</em> Let’s redo the context, again.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl: Moreover, there is ample evidence that…Asians disproportionately apply to a more concentrated list of schools…</p>
<p>Me: I missed this ample evidence. Could you link to it again, please?</p>
<p>You: [This</a> article](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/10/10/asian]This”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/10/10/asian) states…</p>
<p>Conclusion? No. You did not SAY it was “ample evidence.” You IMPLIED it based on your reply. If you didn’t mean that, you should’ve said, “Well, it may not be ample evidence, but this article states…”</p>
<p>Fabrizio wrote:
</p>
<p>post#414
</p>
<p>post#719
</p>
<p>post#228
</p>
<p>That last quote is instructive because I presume that’s the acronym for United Negro College Fund and, that you’re basically advocating we go back to a system whereby the black middle-class is and was expected to attend HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities).</p>
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</p>
<p>Thank you, soomoo. Discussing with you affirms that even for an issue as polarizing as this, we can disagree (strongly at times, too) and still discuss with courtesy.</p>
<p>I think we want the same “end,” but we don’t have the same “means” to get there. And that’s fine!</p>
<p>Thanks, johnwesley. Let’s take it step by step.</p>
<h1>414</h1>
<p>Racial preferences cannot create a black middle class. They serve only to benefit those who are already middle class or higher…</p>
<p>I don’t see how this demonstrates disdain for middle-class blacks. Rather, I’m saying that if you want MORE middle-class blacks, racial preferences are not going to do it.</p>
<p>Now that may not be true. As posted MANY pages back, for the two years that Duke sociologists studied, most blacks at Duke were not from families that earned $100K or more per year; 63% came from families that earned less than that per year.</p>
<p>But the 37% plurality dominated the average, which was still over $100K. What does that mean to you?</p>
<h1>719</h1>
<p>But there is no way you can create a black middle class through affirmative action if the program simply admits black middle class students whose SAT scores are probably higher than poor black students, and apparently, Bowen and Bok argued that affirmative action does create a black middle class, so I have straw manned no one.</p>
<p>Ditto.</p>
<h1>228</h1>
<p>if the injustice offends you so much, why don’t you donate part of your salary to UNCF [Note: I presume that’s the acronym for United Negro College Fund], if you don’t already do that?</p>
<p>Well, shame on me. I mistakenly thought the UNCF was for more than just “40 private, historically black, member colleges and universities.” Please allow me to reword #228, then: if the injustice offends you so much, why don’t you donate part of your salary and start a scholarship for black students?</p>
<p>
So now you are admitting that I did not say that the article was “ample evidence”?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m happy to discuss this issue with you but not if you’re going to act this way. Pizzagirl claimed there was “ample evidence.” I asked for it. You replied and referred me back to the Inside Higher Ed article.</p>
<p>If you didn’t mean for the article to be (part of) the “ample evidence” Pizzagirl referred to, then you should’ve said that. Otherwise, I am going to interpret your reply to my request for “ample evidence” as…“ample evidence.”</p>
<p>Fabrizio wrote:
</p>
<p>Well, now I’m totally confused. You’re argument – all of a sudden – isn’t with the idea of racial set asides or preferences – but, with how they’re paid for??? In other words it’s immoral if the scholarship is funded by university endowment funds, but completely virtuous if I pay for it out of salary? I confess I don’t understand your logic.</p>
<p>^ I think Fab is advising someone who feels ashamed about the racial injustice to donate some money to a scholarship instead of advocating racial preferences. It has nothing to do with endowment funds.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I had to reread my post to remind myself of the context. Let’s quote the entire thing:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Put simply, my post is saying, “If it bothers you, do something about it.” Turning that to myself, I did do something about “it.” I applied to two schools that didn’t consider racial classification and one school where Asians were “correctly” represented. I also changed my surname and declined to self-identify.</p>
<p>Edit</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Thank you, texaspg. That is exactly what I was implying.</p>
<p>Fab; This is one area in which we differ…</p>
<p>"#414
Racial preferences cannot create a black middle class. They serve only to benefit those who are already middle class or higher…</p>
<p>…most blacks at Duke were not from families that earned $100K or more per year; 63% came from families that earned less than that per year.</p>
<p>But the 37% plurality dominated the average, which was still over $100K. What does that mean to you?</p>
<h1>719</h1>
<p>But there is no way you can create a black middle class through affirmative action if the program simply admits black middle class students whose SAT scores are probably higher than poor black students, and apparently, Bowen and Bok argued that affirmative action does create a black middle class, so I have straw manned no one.</p>
<p>Ditto."</p>
<p>I may be oversimplifying, but i think you are over-complicating (is that a word?)</p>
<p>I am not analyzing all the math, but I think when you get four hundred or so black students on campus, you increase, maybe dramatically so, the chances that they meet more upwardly mobile black people than they might otherwise. I bet some will date, and maybe have kids, and that that increases the number of black kids with two college educated parents, maybe who are even married! Every black couple I know met this way, and I they all created more middle class blacks! They did not all marry someone from the same socioeconomic group either.</p>
<p>I hope that is not two primal a goal, but hey! That’s what having kids does to you!</p>
<p>shrinkrap - That is interesting way to move up. If someone with little money went to Duke (the 67%), should nt they be educated well enough to move up on their own? </p>
<p>I am curious about this social rebalancing since I was a poor graduate student when I came over (I was middle class in my country but as you know Asian money did nt translate well into dollars). I graduated, got a job, married someone who also went to college here and voila, we were some where at the bottom of middle class and moved up slowly along the way to say we make a reasonable living now. I am now wondering - should I have found a rich wife in college so life would have been easier!</p>
<p>
Must I spell everything out for you? The article is evidence. The reader can decide whether it is ample evidence. You are taking the position that it is.</p>
<p>Fabrizio wrote:
</p>
<p>Okay, now that you’ve broken it down for me, all I’m seeing here is that you got a couple of shots in at BOTH middle class blacks AND white liberals. I don’t for a moment buy the idea that you meant it as a sincere token of solidarity. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m kind of speechless here because you seem to be implying that you turned down MIT in favor of Georgia Tech because the former practiced affirmative action. If so, that would be taking your dedication to to a whole new level. Oh, wait I hear your nose calling. It’s saying “Take me back, face says he’s sorry!”</p>
<p>
Why am I not surprised?
When you are suspicious about something, what do you do? You look for evidence. Perhaps you *might *also be receptive to suggestions that there could be other explanations for what you’ve observed. I’m glad, at least, that you do not think that anti-Asian discrimination is an established fact.</p>
<p>One evidence that Asians apply to a limited number of schools is in Post 28, which is a long list of colleges and the percentages of Asians at each one. </p>
<p>Why do some of these excellent schools have such small percentages of Asians on campus, compared to the double-digit representation at the Ivies and some other schools? Is it because a lot of Asians don’t apply to these schools?</p>
<p>Here it is again, so you don’t have to scroll back.</p>
<p>Harvard 15%
Princeton 18%
Yale 16%
Columbia 19%
Stanford 16%
Penn 17%
Caltech 42%
MIT 23%
Dartmouth 14%
Duke 21%
Chicago 22%
Northwestern 22%
John Hopkins 19%
WUSTL 18%
Brown 12%
Cornell 15%
Rice 20%
Vanderbilt 6%
Notre Dame 6%
Emory 25%
Georgetown 9%
Berkeley 40%
Carnegie Mellon 22%
USC 25%
UCLA 34%
Virginia 14%
Wake Forest 4%
Tufts 9%
Michigan 14%
UNC 8%
Boston College 10%
W&M 6%
NYU 21%
Brandeis 16%
Georgia Tech 16%
UCSD 50%
Lehigh 5%
Rochester 11%
UC Davis 36%
UCSB 21%
Case Western 18%
Rensselaer 9%
UC Irvine 49%
U of Washington 29%
U of Texas 17%
U of Wisconsin 6%
Penn State 4%
U of Illinois 14%
U of Miami 6%
Yeshiva ~0%</p>
<p>Top 50 LACs are even more forgiving:</p>
<p>Williams 11%
Amherst 11%
Swarthmore 15%
Middlebury 5%
Wellesley 22%
Bowdoin 7%
Pomona 11%
Carleton 7%
Davidson 6%
Haverford 6%
Claremont McKenna 13%
Vassar 9%
Wesleyan U 6%
Smith 12%
Washington and Lee 2%
West Point 6%
US Naval Academy 4%
Grinnell 7%
Hamilton 8%
Harvey Mudd 22%
Bates 4%
Colgate 3%
Colby 6%
Oberlin 4%
Scripps 10%
Barnard 19%
Colorado C 3%
Macalester 5%
Mt Holyoke 6%
Bryn Mawr 12%
Bucknell 3%
C of Holy Cross 4%
Kenyon 5%
Sewanee 2%
Richmond 4%
Occidental 18%
Trinity C 6%
Bard 2%
Lafayette 3%
Whitman 9%
Connecticut C 3%
Franklin & Marshall 4%
Furman 2%
Skidmore 5%
Union 5%
Pitzer ~
Centre 3%
Dickinson 3%
Gettysburg 2%
Rhodes 4%</p>
<p>"should nt they be educated well enough to move up on their own? "</p>
<p>I mean “up” AND into a family, vs being “up” and single, or an “up” single parent. That’s what happens to the majority of black women, with or without a degree. I’m talking about creating more middle class families, not just middle class people, and that is harder for some folks than others.</p>
<p>But I am feeling ambivalent about having this “conversation” here, so I will try to sign off now.</p>
<p>I’m on my iPad and therefore am limited in the ability to reread pizza girl’s post, however, I had to respond to something in her words that offended me. She apparently implies that because one is of Asian descent that that must mean we do or should console, consult with and advise each other on the pitfalls of college applications, etc. Pardon me for the paraphrasing. I am well aware of how people like to split hairs on this touchy subject. My problem with this is that she doesn’t appear to pay attention to the fact that many of us consult, console and advise as well as take advice from people who are not Asian. Example. My daughter found an excellent SAT prep program in town, and she scored pretty well though not 2400. A parent from her school who is white, asked me where my daughter went for instruction. Only one example. I actually am not acquainted with any new immigrant Asians, but I am friends with several Asians who are third and fourth generation. So as someone who pizza girl thinks should be part of this ignorant immigrant population but who isn’t in reality at all part of that group, I take offense. As a human being, I console, consult with and advise anyone I think I can help who asks without regard to immigrant status or race or economic background, and I do this asking for nothing in return except maybe a nice thank you. Please excuse any typos. Working from an iPad is not the best when posting here.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Guilty as charged for “[getting] a couple of shots in at…white liberals.” Mind you, I have nothing against whites or liberals. I don’t agree with liberals when it comes to economic issues, but I hardly think they’re idiots or traitors for disagreeing with me. In the context of what you quoted, I simply feel they’d assuage their guilt better by donating to scholarships for blacks instead of pressing for racial preferences.</p>
<p>But as for “[getting] a couple of shots in at middle class blacks”? Nope. That wasn’t my intention, and I’m having a hard time seeing how that post–either the original or my rewrite–attacks middle-class blacks.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I didn’t apply to MIT. As I said, I followed Pizzagirl’s advice; I “zigged” by applying to a southern LAC where Asians were “correctly” represented. That is, Asians were neither “over-” nor “underrepresented.” I could very well have benefited from racial and geographic preferences at this school, though my SAT scores put me above the 75th percentile in both critical reading and math (but not writing) in the year I applied.</p>
<p>But I’m still a prestige monger because that school is part of Pizzagirl’s “et al.” Oh well, you can’t please everyone.</p>