are colleges racist?

JHS · July 14, 2011, 2:34pm

This is a position that I can respect, but I fear it looks very different to people who are the inheritors of the past harm than it does to people who do not carry the legacy of harm and who don’t want to give up anything to those who do. It is inherently a self-interested position.

Of course, there are plenty of URMs who reject affirmative action, too, and for just that reason, Sowell and Clarence Thomas being two of the best known. The irony is that many of them are serial beneficiaries of affirmative action. But that’s how it’s supposed to work. The presence of an ultra-conservative African American on the Supreme Court is a triumph of affirmative action – Thomas is a model to minority youth of a set of options they might otherwise never even dream about, and an object lesson to non-black Americans that skin color does not dictate ideas.

IndianParent · July 14, 2011, 2:38pm

Isn’t that from an organization that is biased against homosexuals? Why would anyone go anywhere near that organization?

Hunt · July 14, 2011, 2:46pm

Here’s an interesting article:
connecticutlawreview.org/documents/Pohorylo.pdf
It has a good discussion in the last part of what might happen if you replace race-based AA with income-based AA: the result would be that whites would get almost all the benefit, because there are more (in numbers) high-scoring poor whites than blacks. I suppose you could have a system in which AA only goes to those who are URMs and are also poor.

Hunt · July 14, 2011, 2:47pm

You can use the search function to find other threads where this issue has been discussed, including my opinion. Please don’t ■■■■■ this thread any further than you’ve already done.

IndianParent · July 14, 2011, 2:55pm

Hunt, Can you please stop with the ■■■■■■■■ BS? You are really not that important, and I am not going to search other threads to get your invaluable opinion on the Boy Scouts. You gave an example of an organization that I consider obnoxious so I stated it. You don’t have to respond. Talk about being full of yourself.

I rarely get peeved … but boy, some here do take themselves way too seriously.

Bay · July 14, 2011, 3:02pm

I get really, really peeved when someone who has never met me calls me a “hard-core racist.”

IndianParent · July 14, 2011, 3:07pm

Precisely why diversity of ideas is not helped by just having a rainbow of color in the classroom. Very well said.

FreedomEagle · July 14, 2011, 3:15pm

Guys , don’t you think 219 pages are too much :S

IndianParent · July 14, 2011, 3:20pm

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

JHS · July 14, 2011, 3:29pm

Huh? How does Clarence Thomas get to be a model of conservative individualism on the Supreme Court without getting into Holy Cross and then Yale Law School? (And making himself dyspeptic with the suspicion that affirmative action helped with both.)

For fans of affirmative action – not its wan cousin classroom diversity – the point is not to have a rainbow in the classroom. The point is to have a rainbow in all walks of life, including positions of power and social prominence, for which elite university classrooms traditionally served as a kind of filter. It’s social engineering. The same as in India.

IndianParent · July 14, 2011, 3:42pm

I prefer a rainbow of SES and ideas, not colors.

skrlvr · July 14, 2011, 3:47pm

So, IP, given

(1) that you think that many elite colleges are biased against Asians, so that many meritorious Asian students have been denied admission to these elite college and

(2)assuming that these students then go to other well regarded institutions to complete their education (such as Georgia Tech) and

(3) given that you also think that many, if not most, of the more prestigious companies that offer the most lucrative positions seem to network for future employees largely through these elite colleges

Shouldn’t you also be advocating, in addition to ending this biased admissions practice, that these prestigious companies cast a wider net and network for future employees not mainly through these elite colleges, but also through other well regarded institutions for outstanding job candidates?

Or are you somehow saying that the environment at Harvard is so special that simply attending that elite college will make a more meritorious job applicant out of that less meritorious college applicant compared to the other applicant who attends, let’s say, Georgia Tech? (that sentence is too clunky, so I hope you get what I mean)

Because if the end goal, in some respects, is that lucrative Wall Street position, there are two ‘-isms’ that are blocking that goal, in your view (from my perspective)

<ol>
<li>the racism of college admissions officers</li>
<li>the elitism of Wall Street HR people, who privilege an elite college degree too highly over perhaps better qualified candidates at other institutions</li>
</ol>

And also, can’t you see that racism is separate from SES, so that, at least in my understanding of your world view, even Asian middle and upper class students feel the effect of racism (most notably, in the college admissions process). So that Affirmative Action shouldn’t simply be about SES?

RoysGoin2College · July 14, 2011, 3:49pm

Is it true that Asians and White folks have it harder to enter the colleges they want?

johnwesley · July 14, 2011, 3:50pm

Everyone’s waiting for Fabrizio to do his little victory dance as people begin to peel off from exhaustion or just plain boredom. “You can’t keep up” with his brilliant arguments, is his usual retort.

Bay · July 14, 2011, 3:50pm

Then send your kids to a public school, because most of them agree with you.

(Adding, I purposely did not say “then send your kids to UCB,” because I like UCB too much).

IndianParent · July 14, 2011, 3:59pm

I can’t. Discriminating based on elitism is legal. Discrimination based on racism is illegal.

I fully agree. Racism is indeed different from SES, which is why I am OK with AA based on SES, but not based on race. The former is legal, the latter illegal (or should be under the equal protection criteria).

skrlvr · July 14, 2011, 4:03pm

It’s funny how you condone elitism simply because it’s legal. It’s effects can be as limiting to a certain group of people as racism.

So if it was legal to discriminate based on race, you’d be fine with it???

fabrizio · July 14, 2011, 4:05pm

I don’t deny the possibility that some black critics of racial preferences were themselves “serial beneficiaries,” but are you suggesting that the only blacks who can criticize racial preferences are those who are LEAST likely to have received them? And how can you be sure that they were in fact beneficiaries?

Regarding Sowell and Thomas, Sowell graduated from Harvard in 1958, Columbia in 1959, and Chicago in 1968. He earned all of his degrees BEFORE racial preferences existed. It’s a bit closer for Thomas because he entered Holy Cross in 1967, which according to Sowell, was the last year classes were admitted WITHOUT racial preferences. Shelby Steele, another critic of racial preferences, graduated from Coe College in 1968 and was thus also admitted prior to the advent of affirmative action.

If you Youtube “Thomas Sowell: Before and After Affirmative Action,” you’ll see that Sowell’s negative impression of racial preferences is partially based on his own experiences. Sowell argued that prior to racial preferences, his very existence as an educated black man shattered myths of black inferiority; his students respected him because he was the first black professor at their school. After racial preferences came about, students began to question his qualifications. The video shows him telling a humorous anecdote of a student who came to his office hours and after receiving an answer to his question, asked “Are you sure?” Sowell replied, “Yes, I wrote the book.”

fabrizio · July 14, 2011, 4:18pm

The phrase “affirmative action” didn’t exist before [Executive</a> Order 10925](<a href=“http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/history/35th/thelaw/eo-10925.html]Executive”>http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/history/35th/thelaw/eo-10925.html), issued by President Kennedy on March 6, 1961. So I find it highly unlikely that your father could have been a beneficiary of a program that didn’t exist yet :D

And besides, Executive Order 10925 said NOTHING about quotas or “critical masses.” In fact, it was all about aggressive NONdiscrimination: “The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race…”

That shocks me, as one would have to be extremely vile and hateful to admit an individual into a doctoral program, advance him to the candidate stage, and then refuse to sign off the dissertation on the basis of the candidate’s racial classification.

epiphany · July 14, 2011, 4:24pm

In order to get more specific, I would have to name the organizations which she headed and founded, which would in turn name her. I don’t engage in violations of privacy, nor do I condone them in others, in case you hadn’t noticed.

The leadership activities involved unusual persistence in initiative, organization, and sacrifice respective to her personal time and some of her academic time. IOW, she put her time where her mouth was. And that time was also an extension of her academic interests; therefore it was not merely an adjunct of her high school life, but an application of her academic interest in these topics to the real world.

are colleges racist?

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