<p>As I’m sure some of you know, Michigan voters recently approved a ban on affirmative action at state colleges. The presidents of these state colleges are irate, and seem to be vowing to resist the enforcement of the new policy: <a href=“http://www.umich.edu/pres/speeches/061103div.html[/url]”>www.umich.edu/pres/speeches/061103div.html</a></p>
<p>Any of you old timers having flashbacks to the early 1960s, with National Guardsmen escorting students into schools and colleges in compliance with the law, while George Wallace and others tried their best to keep the law from being enforced?</p>
<p>BTW, if President Bush (or the Governor of Michigan) is stupid enough to send the National Guard in to prevent the enrollment of black or Latino/a students, he should be fully prepared to have that video used to bludgeon them in future elections.</p>
<p>My guess is that the single biggest beneficiary group of “affirmative action” in elite college admissions today is white male students. The girls are outperforming them to such a degree in high school that the only way these schools can come close to a 50%/50% gender balance is through gender-aware review of applications. While the preference given to white males is not that large, their proportion of the student body dwarfs African American and Latino/a enrollment.</p>
<p>But, I would guess that Linda Chavez and her race-baiting Republican sponsors probably never stopped to think about that.</p>
<p>I fail to understand what a proposal passed by the voters in the State of Michigan have to do with George W. Bush. And I’m interested in the viability of such a proposal given that the Supreme Court already ruled that consideration of race was appropriate and legal in both graduate and undergraduate admissions at Michigan. Seems like the proposal would have no teeth. Maybe one of our attorney posters will enlighten us.</p>
<p>Btw…I remember segregation. Our town of 5000 had three elementary schools, one for whites, one for blacks and one for Hispanics. When I was in third grade, we were desegregated…and the grades were split among the three schools. I was just a kid and we all thought it was very exciting to have all these new friends. If there was any angst among the adults, I don’t remember. It was a very peaceful transistion…probably because it was not a town of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. It was just a small farming/ranching community and pretty much everyone was a ‘have not’, regardless of race. </p>
<p>A few years later, my family moved back to the Valley and I remember being upset that kids of migrant farmworkers were required to attend school in a separate building and were not allowed to have contact with the other students. Somehow they had fallen through the cracks of desegregration.</p>
<p>The thread started with a reference to the University of Alabama – a situation that involved a University, the Governor, and the President of the United States enforcing a law. </p>
<p>In this particular case, it would probably be the Governor trying to force the University to do something, since it would be a state statute.</p>
<p>In any case, the Michigan referendum is going to lead to a protracted legal mess. If I had to guess, I would wager that UMich will find a favorable ruling in a lower court and Chavez try to march the thing right back up the ladder to the Supreme Court. A key issue will be whether or not the State of Michigan wants to enforce the referendum.</p>
<p>The ridiculous thing is the amount of money the taxpayers of Michigan are spending on affirmative action litigation. The voters may point to the California ban on affirmative action as a “good thing”, but it seems like a disgrace that only 200 of the 12,200 acceptances at UCLA this year went to black students. I don’t see that as a “good thing” at all for Los Angeles or the state of California.</p>
Your posts are full of ridiculous presumptions, including the above. Most people I know of who favor eliminating race and gender from admissions do so because affirmative action is just a pretty name for racism and sexism. Racism and sexism should be eliminated and the best way to do that is to get rid of affirmative action. If our colleges become filled with an endless supply of Asian Americans and women, I really don’t see that as a problem so long as they got there based on merit. In fact, is is probably a good thing for Asian Americans to dominate college admissions becuase it shows a disproportionate success based on hard work, not race. It is better to have an Asian American example, than a “token” African American.</p>
<p>Blucroo, I understand that back then it was integration and now it’s affirmaitive action. As Interested Dad points out, the similarity of the situations is that in each case you have public officials (back then the governors of those states, now it will be the college presidents) who are openly vowing to do whatever they can to prevent compliance with the spirit–and maybe even the letter–of the law. I don’t expect Michigan’s governor to be much help in enforcing the new policy, which could set up a bizarre situation of the people having voted overwhelmingly to abolish affirmitive action, but the public officials doing their best to ignore the constitutional amendment.</p>
<p>Yes, but isn’t it interesting that all of Linda Chavez’ research documents prove “discrimination” against white applicants by showing their higher SAT scores, but conveniently fail to point out that the same statistics show even more “discrimination” against Asian Americans.</p>
<p>Look at the data presented in Chavez’ research on UVa admissions.</p>
<p>Yeah. Like I say, it’s a legal mess. If the Governor is not interested in aggressive enforcement, then somebody is going to have to sue UMich. I assume that Linda Chavez’ group will advertise for a plaintiff, just like they did in the last round of UMich Supreme Court challenges.</p>
<p>The problem is that the Proposal 2 language is so broad that it’s like an ink-blob test. Any court could interpret it any way they want.</p>
<p>I think UMich’s defiance is an intriguing legal strategy. It puts the onus on somebody else to force them to comply. In that sense, it does parallel George Wallace’s strategy.</p>
I thought the subject was affirmative action? This doesn’t mean “anti-minority” - it means the elimination of racial and gender bias in admissions.</p>
<p>A similar law has been in place in California for several years now. The top public universities now actually have a minority as a majority.</p>
<p>
A disgrace of what? Certainly not UCLA who is admitting students based on qualifications without discrimination as to race or gender. Is it a disgrace of the public school system for failing to prepare more URMs more adequately? Is it a disgrace of the social environment many of the URMs grow up in that impact their progress and thus leave them unprepared for a top or sometimes any university? Is it a disgrace that the qualified URMs are so eagerly sought after by colleges willing to throw money at them in order to engineer the racial makeup of their schools? One needs to think in terms of ‘root cause’ of the problem. The university admissions point is near the end point and not the place the problems can hope to be fixed. The top UC admissions stats are basically the ‘messenger’ reflecting the problem - they’re not the cause of it.</p>
<p>That’s what I am thinking of. Somehow I don’t think that slamming the doors of the local state university campus to black students is likely to reward educational improvements in South Central.</p>
<p>I find it impossible to believe that there are only 99 black students from greater Los Angeles who could flourish in this year’s freshman class at UCLA…or that only having 99 black freshmen at UCLA is good for the greater Los Angeles community. It’s so short-sighted for the public university to send the best and the brightest black students in Los Angeles to private schools in Palo Alto or back east.</p>
<p>When did they stop using SAT scores for admissions? If you heavily weight SAT scores, you are systematically excluding African American students and, to a lesser extent, Latino/a students in the admissions process.</p>
<p>Why is that? There are many competing theories. I don’t hold the College Board or its testing in particularly high regard. It’s heavily tilted toward students with access to extended preparation.</p>
The doors aren’t being slammed. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the public college system in California but it’s comprised of CCs, CalStates, and UCs. The mission of the UCs is to educate the top 12% of HS students in the state - not to educate whoever happens to be living within a few miles of the campus. The CalStates target a broader academic range and the CCs target everyone. There’s also an excellent program that enables those attending a CC to follow a ‘pathway’ to go on to a CalState or UC. It’s actually easier to be admitted to a UC from a CC that from HS. No one is ‘shut out’ of the California college system.</p>
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I agree it’s not a perfect system but it’s also not required that one have extended test prep to do well on the SAT/ACT. Both of my kids attended a public HS that was heavily populated by URMs, didn’t take any extra test prep for the SAT, and were admitted to very high level colleges. </p>
<p>
Of course, there are many more than 99 blacks from the LA area and the rest of CA who could flourish at UCLA’s freshman class. Given the difficulty of ‘anyone’ being admitted to UCLA, any AfAms that could be admitted on the same academic level as anyone else are highly sought by other prestigious colleges willing to send very generous packages their way to entice them. Can you blame the AfAms who choose the better ‘package’? I don’t.</p>
<p>Yes. I’m familiar with the tiered structure of the California university system.</p>
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<p>But, the UCs are apparently not educating the top 12% of African American HS students in the state. I suspect they also fall well short of the top 12% of Latino/a students as well. Comparing the enrollment of UCLA to that of southern California, it would appear that UCLA is only educating the best Asian American and white students.</p>
<p>There are no clean, easy solutions to that problem. But, it IS a problem.</p>
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<p>No, I don’t blame them at all. With only 99 black freshmen, I am sure that UCLA is a decidedly unattractive place for highly qualified black students. Heck, it would be pretty unattractive to a lot of top white students for the same reason.</p>
<p>Post 18: “…not educating the top 12% of African American hs students in the state.”</p>
<p>There’s no guarantee that each ethnic group is going to be have a set % of the top 12%…just like there’s no guarantee that half of the nurses in the country will be men, or that 60% of the NBA will be white.</p>
<p>I think you need to make the distinction between “equal opportunity” and “equal results.” The UCs are responsible to privide the former, not the latter.</p>
<p>I think that the worst thing a college or university can do, for the sake of their statistics, is admit someone who will not be able to succeed. There is only so much that one can do at the college level to make up for years of inadequate schooling. Far better for that student to start in a community college and work his/herself up to a 4 year institution, than to flunk out or drop out of a higher ranked school. </p>
<p>Graduation rates for blacks at many state universities are very low, and wouldn’t it be better to succeed at a lower-ranked school than fail at a higher ranked one?</p>
<p>There are many “fast-track” programs for transfers from community colleges to 4 year colleges. I fail to see what is wrong with that path.</p>