<p>“The highlighted part is what Asians complain about,”</p>
<p>I don’t complain about any URMs being selected. I only question whether any additional weight given to race should include those whose parents could afford to send them to a private school (granted some have gone to private schools on scholarships). Inherently, a portion of URMs in Ivys get there because of Athletics and a bunch may qualify as first gen or questbridge (harvard does nt use QB). So not all URMs can be lumped in as having gotten in just based on their race.</p>
<p>Re Post 2959: It’s the United States judicial branch that has decided that elite U’s are not breaking the law. In your opinion, they are breaking the law. Minds trained in law believe otherwise. That’s what I am saying.</p>
<p>I’m also saying that you have a right to open a university with your own admissions criteria. Admissions critera outside of the elites is very different, for most publics and privates. No one is required to admit URM’s who are only well-qualified but not hyper-qualified. That is not U.S. law.</p>
<p>Based on my many years on CC, I believe that there is in fact LITTLE support for AA on this site, and for a very good reason. Despite the absence of statistics (no federal imposition on Roger Dooley to collect this information) it is easy to note that the overwhelming majority of the participants are white or asian students. The very small representation of hispanics and black is easily dwarfed by the very large membership from abroad, and especially from Asia.</p>
<p>Although unscientific, I also can assure you that the students who participate in the SAT forums on this site are overwhelmingly from asian descent. Why do I know that? Easy … I have helped several hundreds of them navigating the College Board and college world. Out of each ten students who ever contacted me, nine were MOST DEFINITELY not from the URM group, and I would say that seven to eight were asians. </p>
<p>As far as opposition to AA policies in college admissions, I think it is fair to conclude that most people would oppose the AA policies on principle grounds, or simply because the policies MIGHT impact them negatively. Again, simplistically put, ask a caucasian if his seat is threatened by the policies that boost the chances of a URM, and the answer will probably be yes. Ask him if he is opposed to AA, and the answer will be probably …YES! </p>
<p>On the other hand, the number of people who support AA policies HAS to be smaller. Since, at best it is seen as a “necessary evil,” it is in fact EASIER to condemn the policies than to support them. This is not different from asking childless families to support raising taxes through bonds that finance education. Some do as a matter of “justice” and “equity” but the majority do not like issues that have a negative impact on their own well-being.</p>
<p>What is however less clear if the support of caucasians to eliminate AA policies if such elimination would NOT help them in a tangible way. In the fight against AA, it appears that asians and caucasians are rather strange bedfellows. This apparent when the “fight” moves from attacking the preferences given to URM to attacking other preferences such as legacies, development admits, or athletic recruits. For instance, asians seem to become more ambivalent about legacy preferences as this might kill a preference they could benefit from. On the other hand, attacking the URM “bonuses” that benefited them so well in the past has become a no-brainer.</p>
<p>So it ultimately comes down to law. Right now, the law says that it is OK to discriminate based on race. That law is being challenged daily, and I think it will be overturned sooner or later. I just can’t believe that racist laws can survive in America for ever. I may be a dreamer.</p>
<p>That’s one or two too many trips on the spin cycle for me to tell whether the argument is made of straw or not; the quote is not from a CC poster and they’re not here to clarify it. I have enough trouble keeping track of your replies never mind someone not involved in this thread. (Not to mention, the italization disappeared when I tried to copy the text.)</p>
<p>While, you may have a better grasp of our legal environment than I do, I believe that our AA policies do not make discrimination legal. The problem here seems to relate to divergent definitions of what constitutes discrimination. </p>
<p>For instance, midgets must have a hard time joining the roster of NCAA or NBA teams. Yet, nobody would claim that this is the result of discrimination. Equally, seven-footers seem to have better attributes to play basketball. Yet, this does not mean that every tall guy in the country would be a shoo-in to compete with Dirk or LeBron.</p>
<p>Fwiw, it seems hard to accept a theory that intimates that all asians who are accepted are done because they deserve to be accepted, but that all asians who are rejected are only rejected because of discriminatory policies that transfer the “spot” to an undeserving minority. This is impossible to establish because the definition of “deserving” remains entirely speculative to outsiders.</p>
<p>If there are not enough "URM"s who are competitive with the “[whites/Asians] who are the most deeply smart,” yes, that is a problem. But racial preferences don’t solve it.</p>
<p>There may not be “enough” but there are some. And I can see the benefit of adding some “good enough” URM’s as “filler”, if that makes for a better community. And if that “good enough URM” brings something else (like a different gender, or more than average money, and second gen, or middle-class perspective), better still.</p>
<p>I know this perspective is pretty rare (underrepresented, if you will…), so I don’t count on it changing things.</p>
<p>There thus appears to be a disconnect between how we respond to the PHRASE “affirmative action” and its DEFINITION. If you just ask people, “Are you for AA”? most will say ‘yes.’ But if you go a step further and define it, “Are you for racial preferences?” most will say ‘no.’</p>
<p>There were two questions. The first one was a lot more than “Are you for AA”: </p>
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</p>
<p>While the opposition to "“We should make every possible effort to improve the position of blacks and other minorities, even if means giving them preferential treatment.” is duly noted, one should wonder what the people who disagree would suggest can be done "to help blacks, women and other minorities get better jobs and education.” </p>
<p>Regardless, this is not as important as the fact that people who are placed in positions to make choices DO seem to support providing preferential treatment to targeted groups. It is fair to assume that people who establish admission policies are well-aware of the support or opposition their decision will generate. It is also fair to assume that they possess a better understanding of the causes and remedies than the average Joe Six Pack on the street.</p>
<p>OK, so we’re switching subjects from plain ol’ “caucasian[s]” to “people who are placed in positions to make choices.” We are apparently acknowledging that “people who are placed in positions to make choices” do not have the same opinion on racial preferences as “caucasian[s]” at large do, and we are assuming that they are better informed than “caucasian[s]” at large.</p>
<p>To that I say, yeah right. Their understanding is nonexistent; at best, they know [one</a> side](<a href=“http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sica/reading.htm]one”>http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sica/reading.htm) of the issue. They have no idea what the other side is. I would never consider anyone who only knew one side of an issue to be well-informed or to have “understood” the issue.</p>
<p>Fab, I know this was probably a Freudian slip on your part, but, that’s exactly the quandary that JFK’s original executive order placed on all federal agencies (it gradually began to be applied to any company with a federal contract.) In other words, if you’re the human resources rep of a Fortune 500 company, how do you show compliance without hiring <em>somebody</em> , anybody? Objective criteria? Ha, the landscape is littered with court decisions striking down various civil service tests as “culturally biased”, so it’s no wonder that there is such heavy reliance in certain industries on where you went to college and that colleges were thrust into the role of gatekeepers. </p>
<p>Btw, I happen to agree with Indianparent that an elite degree is a definite commodity that confers certain benefits. Like blood diamonds part of their value lies in their scarcity which is quite deliberate. If the Ivy League were to actually expand to make room for all the people who test well, not only would we not be having this conversation, but, there would be no need for adcoms. And, we’d have to find something else to argue about. ;)</p>
<p>This was the first year in a long time neither sister was in the finals. Btw, it was Serena who was unceremoniously bounced from US open due to a penalty point during that match.</p>