<p>The message is clear. What message is this? Is it, “The system is no longer giving me preferential treatment. I’m going to stop trying”? Or is it, “Now my race is no longer preferentially treated. I must work harder. I can do it”?</p>
<p>Besides, you’re one of the many parents here who believe that a Black student is unique simply because he is Black. Shouldn’t this manifest on an already qualified Black student’s application? Aren’t there things that he and only he would be able to do?</p>
<p>If Blacks can’t make it because of racial preferences, then why support them?</p>
<p>Basically, your whole “keep an eye on the good ones” idea amounts to permanent training wheels.</p>
<p>You can never have strong Blacks in this country unless you tell them that they are fully capable of achieving without preferential treatment. Note that I did not say that Blacks can make it without help. I said they can make it under a system that is free of racial preference.</p>
<p>“Besides, you’re one of the many parents here who believe that a Black student is unique simply because he is Black.”</p>
<p>I guess I am not the only one who notices the heavy support for AA in the parents forum. I had a pretty extensive debate in the parents forum concerning AA and they completely ignored my argument. They insuled me and my statistics, despite the fact that the statistics showed the obvious effects of AA. </p>
<p>I used an example of a black girl in my class who was very smart and worked hard in school. She was admitted into a competitive magnet school based on her GPA and performance on the magnet school’s admission test, not her racial status. If AA was done away with, you’d see more minorities like her since they would no longer have AA to sail in on.</p>
<p>Here’s the text:
PROHIBITION AGAINST DISCRIMINATION OR PREFERENTIAL
TREATMENT BY STATE AND OTHER PUBLIC ENTITIES.
INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.
Prohibits the state, local governments, districts, public universities, colleges, and schools, and other government instrumentalities from discriminating against or giving preferential treatment to any individual or group in public employment, public education, or public contracting on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin. Does not prohibit reasonably necessary, bona fide qualifications based on sex and actions necessary for receipt of federal funds. Mandates enforcement to extent permitted by federal law. Requires uniform remedies for violations. Provides for severability of provisions if invalid. Summary of Legislative Analyst’s
Estimate of Net State and Local Government Fiscal Impact:
The measure could affect state and local programs that currently cost well in excess of $125 million annually. Actual savings to the state and local governments would depend on various factors (such as future court decisions and implementation actions by government entities). </p>
<p>I’m sorry, Drosselmeier, but don’t see how the proposition connects to your point at all. Neither does that “White & Nerdy” video, because the focus was on white stereotypes, not black ones.</p>
<p>I agree that the wrtiers of the article weren’t intentionally trying to be racist or write things that others may find offensive, but giving the excuse that the editor-in-chief is Asian means nothing, especially considering that she’s South Asian.</p>
<p>fabrizio- Having taken the AP equivalent of each IB exam I took, yes, I am very aware of that. My point remains that AP is very much a regurgitation learning process. The AP Chem exam MC section, for example, consisted almost entirely of stoich problems. Easy, but annoying. (I think this is getting off-topic, though. :p)</p>
When all around him he is told he can’t do it because naysayers have seen what has happened in the past, and when the few students who actually do work hard and score well STILL don’t manage to make it because they enter a system that is veritably swamped by kids from better environments, the message of hopelessness is reinforced. But when that hardworking kid actually makes it, everyone is encourages, and even the naysayers are left questioning whether what they are saying is even true. I have seen both things take place with my own eyes.</p>
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His uniqueness may not necessarily show on an application, especially since his race, a thing that is terribly significant to his identity and history in this place, would be hidden by law under your sort of system. If you hide the race, then even the meaning of the student’s essay can be obscured. “Borat” becomes a different movie, if we don’t know the true race of the man behind him. Race is significant, and ought not be hidden. Of course race should not be significant, but unfortunately it is. A black guy who is qualified for an elite school is unique in context of the histories of the people in this country. Of all Americans, blacks are the only group that was created here from scratch, and then held down educationally by law, so that even teaching a black how to read was grounds for punishment. Black Americans have come out of that history. Seeing them do well educationally is part of a fantastic American story that no one from any other group can tell. Hiding race obscures the power of this story.</p>
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Absolutely, but if you hide race, then the meaning is lost. If race were insignificant, then that would be one thing. But race is not insignificant and never has been. From 1619 to 2007, blacks have had to struggle with the unique pressures America has dumped on them and ONLY on them. And now, four hundred years later, we are getting black scholars who are as qualified as white and Asian students – not as many, but we are getting some. That is fantastic, and ONLY black students can tell this story. It is a story that needs to be told. It is uniquely American. It is part of what has made this country what it is. ANY school that cuts it off, that ignores it, simply truncates its power as an American educational institution in my opinion.</p>
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Because they are your countrymen. I would support you were you in the same predicament. I would do this simply because you are American, and because the history of your country is one wherein the whole government deliberately exploited your entire group. I would work to support you joining me.</p>
<p>You know, this ain’t for me. I don’t like AA. I don’t think anyone does. It is medicine and most of us would simply rather have a healthy patient than one who needs medicine. I have always had questions and misgivings about it. Also, my kids don’t need AA because being raised as they have, they sense that even if they don’t go to college they will continue to learn right here in our house. They will invent something that you will wish to buy, and eventually they will prosper. I am trying to get the people my country has hurt, unhurt. I want the whole group to repair itself. I just happen to be black, and so I see the hurt up close. But if I didn’t have to deal with this, I would be fighting for AA for Native Americans. Even now, should my own kids get passed over while some qualified Native American kid moves from his reservation into a great school, I certainly won’t be whining against the school or against AA. I want it so that no Native American group feels the sting of the past. I want this for blacks too – so that when the hurts of the past are mentioned in classrooms, black kids feel they are talking about history, and not something they are living right now.</p>
<p>It ain’t about guilt. It’s because I like the idea of dealing fairly. I especially like the idea of working a plan that will do away with the results of the errors of the past. It is a sin against nature and against all that is decent to pass laws that for centuries denied a certain group the freedom to express even basic human nature (a critical part of which is freedom), laws that preferred everyone else BUT this one group. We have no cause to think ourselves admirable just because we decided to repeal those laws once everyone else had surpassed this one group. The centuries long mistreatment of blacks has made it such that all other groups have prospered, leaving many blacks feeling certain that they have little chance to join everyone else. That certainty is now part of large segments of the group’s culture. When a member of this culture fights his way to solid academic performance, you really have something special on your hands. That kid has decided to pursue himself against serious odds, and often against the influences of his own family. Given the history of his group, it is just the epitome of heartlessness to throw him to the odds even thought he is as qualified as most other students. All you do here is confirm what everyone around the kid likely has been telling him – that no matter what he does, no matter how hard he works, he can only go just so far in America.</p>
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I never said anything about this being permanent. I just want to give the kid who is fighting against the odds the company of as many kids like him, so that he can feel himself part of a more hopeful culture. We need to get MANY hardworking blacks to offset the defeatism in the culture. This is already happening, and I think Affirmative Action has helped it. It needs to continue. In fact, we need to find ways to accelerate it because you folks obviously aren’t that patient if you are whining after a mere thirty years of trying. But that is fine. Maybe you ought not be that patient. I think you probably need to keep pushing as you do, and let folks see how urgent it all is. Just don’t move forward too fast, and don’t be ugly because a lot of folks will just say “of course. That’s they way its always been”.</p>
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There are very many strong blacks already. I’ve seen some of them. These kids are really hard hitting. The problem is not that there aren’t strong blacks. The problem is that the system has for so long favored everyone BUT blacks, that it is now jammed tight with others so that the strong blacks are simply swamped by the numbers. What blacks need is a culture that, like many immigrant cultures, coordinates its strongest members toward some hope, and that looks to education as a way to realize it. Asians and others come here with hope of gaining a foothold in the American system. Blacks never have had this as a group because when they have tried to get it, they were denied it, and denied it brutally right up to modern times. I think only now are we getting some coordination of the culture. It is a hard thing because the distractions in some of our communities are too great. But once we get enough blacks looking to the highest schools, and sending their children after these schools, go ahead and get rid of whatever you wish. The damage will be repaired.</p>
<p>How will we know when to get rid of AA? We will know it when Ward Connerly appears with mostly blacks behind him, and not whites. When that happens, then go ahead and end it. No one is gonna even say a thing.</p>
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I think they can make it in a race blind system. That is not really my fear. One black of a thousand will get into the schools because of the odds. But it would be very sad to see that one black get in JUST BECAUSE of the odds when there were ten other blacks in the applicant pool with the same qualifications and who, because there were ten thousand whites and Asians with the same qualifications, didn’t get in. We need all eleven of these blacks, especially to give support to the one black who got in.</p>
<p>I think that if we just jump too fast to your sort of system, it will cause a lot of unnecessary pain for everyone. It will make the job of helping blacks a lot harder.</p>
Of course without the black stereotype, the nerdiness of the white stereotype is not apparent. It is because the blacks are gangsters that the white guy doesn’t gain their company. There is no room for a black nerd in this video. Blacks are gangsters, and this is very apparent all throughout the thing. With the many similar influences in this country, this video can be just devastating to the psyche of a black kid. But I think whining that Al is a racist is going too far.</p>
I’m sorry. What is this? I try to be up on the modern lingo, but I’m down. Hmmm. Actually, I’m not down. I try to be down with the lingo. But, I guess I’m up? Whew.</p>
<p>When it comes to affirmative action, all principles are cast aside in the name of “diversity” and all its other synonyms. Equal treatment becomes a farce. Merit is dismissed as “rote learning.”</p>
<p>The natural experiments provided by the U.C. system don’t convince them that their fears are unfounded. A decade after Proposition 209 passed, the U.C. system isn’t any less diverse. Matter of fact, the number of “under-represented” students has increased. Minorities make up a majority of the students.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, for supporters of affirmative action, your friend is not an example to follow but rather an exception. They don’t see it the way you and I do. They see racial preferences as necessary to make sure that your friend doesn’t get lost, even though she’s obviously strong enough to make it without any preferential treatment.</p>
<p>I know I am one of those parents whom you don’t want to hear from, but seriously, I’m only trying to keep you on track here.</p>
<p>It really doesn’t matter how affronted you feel about this entire process, the only thing that matters is how the US Supreme Court views using race as a factor in admissions.</p>
<p>The composition of the Court has changed since the Michigan decision. Therefore, it is certainly possible that the current Court will revisit this issue and come to a different result. But IMHO, your argument needs to be centered around WHY RACIAL DIVERSITY IS NOT IMPORTANT in a university setting if you want to win this argument.</p>
<p>Once again, we both acknowledge that there simply are not many qualified Black applicants today. A lot of parents won’t admit this, but it should be obvious given their supreme reluctance to abandon racial preference systems. This is a major problem that reflects how ineffectual affirmative action truly is.</p>
<p>Hiding race from the application helps ensure a neutral review. There would be no “not another boring ” comments because the admissions officers would not know what the candidate’s race is. This helps all applicants because the chances of a fair appraisal are greater.</p>
<p>You’re telling me that you don’t want your race to count against you, but you do want it to count for you. This is not equal treatment.</p>
<p>All you do here is confirm what everyone around the kid likely has been telling him – that no matter what he does, no matter how hard he works, he can only go just so far in America.</p>
<p>No. I’m telling him that he should be treated equally. This means no preferential treatment and no discrimination. I’m sending him a clear message that not only is he capable of reaching high standards, but he must if he is to go as far as he can in our country.</p>
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<p>Within this thirty years, we have seen the income gaps worsen. We have seen the test gaps increase. Neither of those two occurrences are benefits.</p>
<p>I do not have a copy of A Dream Deferred on me, but I remember a chilling statistic. The number of Blacks at Berkeley in the decades before Proposition 209 increased each year at a snail’s pace. The average gains were miniscule at best. This is with institutionalized racial preferences. The number of Asians at Berkeley in the same time frame skyrocketed. The number of Asian students kept increasing despite not being recipients of preferential treatment. I wager most of these were either immigrants or children of immigrants. The former group had to learn English as a second language. The latter group had to adjust with two cultures at once. They benefited from the Civil Rights Movement, but they did not benefit from racial preferences.</p>
<p>In short, racial preferences have failed. Utterly. It is ineffective. In many ways, it makes the problem worse.</p>
<p>Your fourth-to-last paragraph contradicts your penultimate one. You stated that there are currently are enough strong Black applicants. Later on, you stated that the number of qualified White and Asian applicants severely outnumber their Black counterparts.</p>
<p>I realized you’re in favor of AA for Native Americans, but do you really mean to say that Native Americans haven’t suffered from “unique pressures”?</p>
<p>On a completely different topic, most Hispanics, being fairly recent arrivals (last 50 years, mostly), haven’t suffered from “unique pressures”, or to a much lesser extent. Why do they still get AA?</p>
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<p>It’s easy to agree with anything when such a hyperbolic and dramatic statement as that is made. However, if one randomly selected one thousand people out of those ten thousand, you would probably get one African American. You don’t need all eleven, but if they prove themselves to be more qualified, they should all get in. However, if everybody is equally qualified, no group should get preference. I must voice my views: I don’t care about diversity in the context of “Who gets in to college?”. If it comes, naturally, then great, it’s in its purest form. However, it can’t be forced. Many people complain that without AA, the “black man’s view” would be neglected. However, all our countries wonderful HBCUs neglect all oher points of view. That’s really like reading Garraty without Zinn, or vice versa, but hey, that’s how it works.</p>
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<p>Nor is there room for a white gangster. I could see how this video could be devastating to the psyche of a white kid. But any person, of any race, who sees it and thinks about its meaning shouldn’t be offended. On the other hand, I could see how the Princetonian’s article could be devastating the the psyche of an East Asian kid. The difference is that this one is more offensive.</p>
<p>I agree with a Princeton professor when he said the article “employed the easiest, basest stereotypes of culture and character and voice for its sensational aims, offering little more than the most juvenile gloss on the issues … frankly, the piece astounds me not so much for its racism as its stupidity.”</p>
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<p>That isn’t something AA can fix. Slight racial preferences in college admissions and employment is not going to change a culture. The African-American people need information and support, not spoonfeeding. AA seems to be draining African-Americans’ belief that they can support themselves, which is fundamental to their growth.</p>
<p>Something (not Drosselmeier, but the arguments of others sharing his opinion) reminds me of Malcolm X’s statement that “the American Negro cannot be held responsible” for any violence he has committed, etc., because he is only responding to 400 years of pressure from white people. Not a good excuse. However, Drosselmeier’s argument also seems to be on the border of the “historical sins” argument. The Indian people have also suffered, first under the Delhi sultans, then the Mughals, then the British, but nobody blames some random other person for that. As stated earlier, Drosselmeier, please don’t respond to this part, as I was addressing the arguments of other people.</p>
<p>To help people keep up with the news about this topic, I would like to inform everybody that just a week ago, a Wikipedia article about Jian Li was created.</p>
<p>Indeed, with Justice Kennedy - historically an opponent of racial preferences - in the swing position, it’s very possible that there will be a more equitable ruling.</p>
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<p>Two separate issues. Racial diversity can be obtained without looking at race. Geography can be used, instead. It is far less explosive of a factor than race is. Racial preferences need not exist for racial diversity to exist.</p>
<p>After Prop 209, the UCs tried that geographical idea. They instituted a new rule that said something to the effect of, “the top 12% students of every Cal high school will automatically be admitted to a UC.” By doing this, they assumed that they would automatically get latinos and blacks from the mostly latino and black high schools, and thus “geography” would work out the problem. Unfortunately, it did not work, because it turns out that even at the heavily latino and black schools, there are enough Southeast Asian students there who score highest on SATs and GPAs. </p>
They way I teach it is to show the kid the realization of where we want to go. And then, rather than give some lecture and then have them do oodles of examples based on the lecture, start solving the problems MYSELF, asking them all along the way to speculate about what sort of knowledge would be nice to have to get us to the next step toward our mutual goal. The kids just eat this up. After going at it like this for a bit, the WHOLE BUNCH “gets it” because thy have been working very hard literally thinking about how we can put the puzzle together. When a kid hits on it, you can just see the switches in those kid’s heads go “click, click, click, click”, they all start turning on. After we all reach the goal together, having them show me, really, how to get there. We do it again, with them speculating, REALLY THINKING about the sort of realizations they might have to come to in order to get where we want to go. They don’t usually forget because they were the ones to think up the solutions themselves. Sometimes I will get a kid who comes up with some new off the wall method to the goal that works even when no one knows how it works. And we will explore that, to figure out why it works. But in everything we do, we are questioning why and what we might need to get to where we want to go. By the time we are done, the kids are basically just telling me what to write. I shut up and they do the work. That is how I think it ought to be done, rather than give a lecture in which a small fraction of the class “gets it”. Many kids don’t learn by hearing. They need to see it and touch it AND hear it. I try to totally saturate their senses with the stuff so that they are having to engage the material in every way possible.</p>
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They will if they are taught early on how to think through stuff, to piece up problems, and then question what they might need to move from one piece to another. ALL my kids do this, every single one of them. Now, they are doing math that frankly I just don’t understand. I really don’t have a clue about most of the stuff at all. I teach science in the same way, showing the reality of things, and having them speculate as to how that reality might exist. Over time, no thing escapes them. They forget nothing because they thought the thing through themselves, piece-by-piece, confirming whether their idea is right, and then building until their understanding is complete. By the time the SAT rolls around, the kids take the thing like its nothing.</p>
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It all seems the same boring moronic stuff to me. No wonder so many kids hate it. Sorry to put so fine a point on it, but I frankly don’t think our educational system should reward such robotic behavior by going to your sort of system. Some students may not score as well as some guy in the People’s Republic of China on a test, but he may be soooo much better thinking than that Chinese cat. An admissions system that allows people to choose all those hard to quantify qualities about a person is best, I think. And race is definitely a factor here because it can influence, and often does influence, meaning.</p>
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It all seems exactly the same to me, whether it is memorizing solutions or ‘trying to understand how somebody else’s solutions came about’. Both are barbaric and just plain boring. It is useful to know other folks solutions. That helps things move along. But I think the goal in teach is to teach kids how to think up their own solutions – NOT just to understand how somebody else’s solutions came about. You know, I don’t even think you can teach kids how to come up with their own solutions because the fact is, I hardly know any math at all. What I really teach is the NEED to depend on yourself for the creation of your own solutions. Once a kid figures out that it is up to him to get to the goal, he starts on the adventure and keeps at it until the thing is done. When he later looks at “the” solution, often times you will see the kid go “Ah! Yes! THAT’s good! I love the way he did it”. The response is so powerful because the kid has been tinkering around the problem on his own and has probably stumbled across parts of the solution himself. So when he finally sees it laying there before him, it gives him this really warm feeling-- a sense that he is somehow connected to cats like Euclid and Leibniz.</p>
<p>I know it all sounds weird to you and your way of handling it. But this works. Maybe it won’t get a perfect score as the Ocean Question way. But it really gets some seriously creative students who over time will do some great stuff. I think admissions officers should have the flexibility to look for this and not be wedded so rigidly to some test score or even to GPA. But hey, I am not an officer. So I really know nothing about it. I am just sharing my own view of the stuff.</p>
<p>Yes, Southeast Asians will add diversity, but they won’t solve the problem of a dearth of blacks, latinos and native americans.</p>
<p>Think of it this way: The universities want racial diversity, and the US Supreme Court said “this is good.”</p>
<p>So the universities admit the most qualified Asians, whites, blacks, latinos, native americans they can find.</p>
<p>Fortunately for Asians, as a whole they are a high achieving group, so their average test scores, GPAS, ECs etc are better than all other races. Unfortunately, it means each Asian applicant needs to meet a higher standard.</p>
<p>Fair? Maybe, maybe not. But that is the current state of affairs and has been sanctioned by the US Supreme Court.</p>
C’mon. Read the thing. There are enough qualified applicants to form academic representations at the schools, enough to support the culture that needs to develop. But there are not enough if you take these blacks and just swamp them with tens of thousands of whites and Asians. The history of blacks has never allowed this sort of thing to develop.</p>
<p>If colleges and universities institute racial quotas and racial discrimination as they wish in order to achieve “diversity” or certain racial balances, then what kind of example does this set?</p>
<p>What if a broadcast station in rural Montana wants to accurately represent its completely white constituency? Can it make it extremely difficult for minorities to get jobs there by setting standards extremely high for them?</p>
<p>This would be “in their interests”, just as having “diversity” was deemed to be in the interests of universities and colleges by the supreme court.</p>