<p>Midmo, thanks for your concern. I live in Michigan, so I know I’m not outnumbered. Regardless, the number of people on both sides has nothing to do with my positions.</p>
<p>I lived in the Detroit area during the 1967 riot, and I lived and went to college in the Boston area during the bussing war in the 1970s. So I’m accustomed to the heat of racial debates.</p>
<p>I’m currently in a position to do a lot of hiring. I always try to hire the people who will be most beneficial to my company. Sometimes they are black, sometimes white, sometimes Puerto Rican, and sometimes they are are from India, Nigeria, Iraq, or Russia. Funny how that works.</p>
<p>My first recollection of the AA debate was an undergrad sociology professor telling us that we had to do whatever was necessary to ensure all jobs had approximately the same % of each group as existed in the general population. After class, I told him that if he really believed that, he should march over to the law school and tell about half of the Jewish students to pack their bags.</p>
<p>TourGuide you and UCLA dad have articulated very well about what is wrong with race based AA. Many here believe that the great social engineering based on race would make life better for those affected. In my opinion it does the exactly opposite. Some minority kids rely on it. They know that they dont have to push themselves hard, the system will push them. Just like many of the welfare programs people could become very dependent on them.</p>
<p>Other issue I think is whether these kids are able to pursue their dream careers or not. I have seen few minority kids who enter elite colleges with dreams of majoring in physics, math, mol bio or engineering. They end up majoring in humanities with concentration in languages or history. Private institutions in their zeal to become diverse may actually be cheating such kids.</p>
<p>I may not be recruiting as much as you do. This year I recommended two kids one African American and one Hispanic. Last year I recruited thee one white girl, one Pakistani heritage boy and one girl (I could not make out her national origin).</p>
<p>Simba I totally agree with your post. It’s really a self-sulfilling prophecy if you know you’ll get an automatic boost in life just because of you race.</p>
<p>How terribly ironic that statement is—for 300 plus years, whites have been awarded an automatic boost by virtue of their race in just about EVERY social, economic and political realm in America. But it is blacks who have been robbed of the incentive to accell by virtue of the fact that perhaps .000003 of their total historical population have had their race considered while being granted admission to elite colleges during the past 40 years ? Riiiiiiiiight…</p>
<p>welllllllllll one can play victim forever if they wish to. One can also take these signs as what future may hold and start taking responsibility to better one’s self.</p>
<p>What in my post denotes that I advocate “playing victim”. I’m just stating a stone cold fact. Sorry if it offends, you Simba. The truth is often offensive.</p>
<p>My son is a relatively advanced student in his high school, so he volunteered to do tutoring at school. lately, he is mostly tutoring a black student, the scheduled time is every Thursday afternoon for one hour, and the black student didn’t show up many times, even if my son offered many time to make it up at some other times, he always said , no, that’s ok. son is frustrated at his less willingness to learn and worried about his slow progress since it’s already half year past and he still couldn’t get a simple concept of sin/cos right…but he seems not care that much.</p>
<p>I think the family support or pressure was not there is also a fact that the kid doesn’t take academic serious enough. If it happened in chinese family, the parent will work hard and press hard to help the kid get though, sometime it means learn together with the kid…</p>
<p>Amother, you hold up this one anecdote as some kind of template by which all black students adhere? Do you honestly believe that that is intellectually honest? Sure, there are black students who won’t care to take advantage of tutoring when it is offered. There are white students, and even, I would hazard to guess, some asian students, who do the same. But, believe it or not, we black folk are not all tapped into the hive mind of the Borg. We are (gasp!) as individual and variable as the next person of non-black ethnicity. And I doubt VERY SERIOUSLY that you will find many black Elite college candidates who aren’t serious about academics. Most, like my D, perform competitively once they metriculate into such schools. She is a Junior Physics Major in one of the most well regarded undergraduate Physics depts. in the country, and is doing quite well, thankyou. Her goal is to qualify for some of the most competitive Graduate Physics programs in the country, and according to the head of her dept, she is currently on target for that eventuality. </p>
<p>So there, we’ve exchanged anecdote for anecdote. But I’m sure you’ll just go on believing that which is convenient for you to believe…Selah!</p>
<p>She’s not saying ALL black students act like that. But you’re saying ALL members of certain groups deserve special consideration. What she’s saying is that if a group is going to demand special consideration for ALL of its members because of lack of opportunity, then the parents, clergy, and other leaders of that group should be endlessly driving home the point to its youth that they should take advantage of opportunities when they are there.</p>
<p>I’m guessing that the subtext of the California and Michigan votes against race-based decisions is that a lot of people think opportunities ARE there…billions of dollars have been spent to create opportunities. Schools are opportunities. Libraries are opportunities. Charities are opportunities. Volunteer tutors are opportunities. But they are just that…opportunities. You can’t force SUCCESS or RESULTS on people. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.</p>
<p>Oh come now, Tourguide. Amother put forth her poisonous little anecdote as a reinforcement of Simba’s (often implied) assertion that blacks don’t take responsibility to "better themselves, but instead merely “play the victim”. Seeing as Simba reinforces this perception with notable frequency on these boards, I think it’s logical to assume that she believes this to be true of most black people. And given this belief, it’s easy to understand why she resents AA. But it is a belief predicated upon a LOT of misconceptions—one of the most serious being that most black applicants to the elite colleges are slackers who don’t deserve a place on campus, whiney “victims” who don’t take responsibility for their own education. This belief rides part and parcel with the oft stated one that these applicants are “underprepared” to handle academics at the elite level—an assertion contradicted in total by the high graduation rate of blacks from elite schools. I’d say that these students are taking advantage of opportunities offered. I’d call that “a horse drinking the water it’s been lead to”.</p>
<p>“But you’re saying ALL members of certain groups deserve special consideration.” </p>
<p>No indeedy, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that ALL members of a certain group have already historically received, and continue to receive, virtually unabated, countless benefits (special consideration)predicated upon their race. Benefits, both large and small, benefits so frequent and multifarious that they are largely taken-for-granted. I’m saying, it is disingenuous on its face to argue that AA is an egregious miscarriage of justice, and a breach of all that is “fair”, when whites have been awarding themselves Affirmative Action for 300+ years in every conceivable social, political, and economic, category.</p>
<p>If the URMs on campus academically deserve to be there, what is the problem with taking race out of the admissions process and letting their credentials get them in?</p>
<p>Not to get too involved with the argument, but couldn’t you say that about pretty much any admissions boost? I.e. athletes, legacies, development admits, etc. Athletes I can understand but the other two are IMO much more similar to AA in the sense that they give an applicant an advantage on the basis of something they did nothing to earn. To be honest I would prefer that neither race nor connections to alumni/wealth factor into admissions but as long as two that overwhelmingly benefit white applicants are still in play I don’t see how it’s fair to take away the one boost that benefits URMs.</p>
<p>The post was intended to be offensive; there is no getting around it. Trying to extend a negative stereotype from a single incident, that in itself seemed nastier in the retelling than need be, has “negative agenda” written all over it. If we were discussing wealth and someone made a reference to a nasty experience their son had with a Jewish merchant or drunkenness to another ethnic group or dishonesty to Gypsies or laziness to those from the Southern Hemisphere (as are all common to those with too much anger and too little understanding) it would be seen as not only nasty but racist by most civilized people. Myself included. </p>
<p>If there are facts regarding race and AA present them, but please spare us all the nasty anger and prejudiced anecdotes that in their nefarious design attempt to bind the legs and feet of the person you are about to throw overboard: casting aspersions on an entire race of people before dispatching them. In the anecdote above one could have easily substituted any other ethnic group and extended the experience to everyone who vaguely resembles the appearance of the dunking victim in question. </p>
<p>It is not only uncalled for, it is unbecoming and intellectually dishonest. </p>
<p>Let me add that my opinion of AA is at best uninformed and I hold no view one way or another. I do, however, have very strong views of speech designed to insight anger and hate.</p>
<p>Before trying to build a case against an entire class or race of people one should refine their language or, even better, remain silent until their righteous anger subsides.</p>
<p>Perhaps a little off point here (or maybe a lot), but as much as I dislike the idea of legacy preferences in admissions, to say that this makes a “farce” out of admissions is perhaps a little strong. Shouldn’t we be a little more realistic here? Colleges ARE a business (and we do live in a capitalist society). How would they pay for themselves and all the merit aid which for many of students is the only way they can afford to attend some of these schools (esp private ones) without things like alumni donations? And how best to continue to get alumni donations…? Honestly, haven’t most of them made huge strides in the past few decades to make education more accessible to a greater number of individuals? And yet in a capitalist world, aren’t certain trade-offs required in most businesses if they are to be successful???</p>
<p>In a “perfect” world perhaps everyone would be treated equal (whatever that really means?) and have equal access to equal education and equal employment opportunities with equal pay - and there would be no need for any consideration of race, economics, etc. etc., because there would be no racism or poverty etc. etc. (or a need for private schools, prep schools and all the other opportunities so many of the elite whites receive - because it would all be “equal”, exactly the same). But then, that would not be a capitalist world either! Do we really think that we can always have our cake and eat it too?</p>
<p>Most public schools depend heavily upon Alumni, and private fundraising too, Tourguide. But then, I’m sure you already knew that. Our flagship state schools here (Virginia) receive less than 15% of their funding from The State. Another thing I feel fairly confident about is that you are not now, and never have been truly offended by the concept of Legacy Admits. Yes, I’m saying that the only reason you said “legacy praferences make a farce out off admissions” because you couldn’t defend them in light of your condemnation of AA.</p>
<p>OK - my turn for anecdotes. I knew two kids who went to school with my boys. One Asian, one African American. One a student who played some sports, but was never a starter; the other a star football player and state-ranked wrestler. Well, you guessed it: the football player neglected his studies and partied too much, to the point where he lost his eligibility to play at the end of the season - which only required a 2.0 GPA! The other kid was a solid student, hard working, bright but not brilliant; good grades, good SATs, kind of a grind, actually. So the football player never graduated, and the other kid is now at Michigan State. </p>
<p>So does the fact that I know an Asian dropout and a hard-studying African-American kid mean anything? Probably not, but if I had the desire I suppose I could work it into some grand theory of social significance.</p>
<p>OK, Poet, now you can bash Kluge for stereotyping.</p>
<p>I like how if you agree with an anecdote, it’s a pithy example that fleshes out the big picture. If you disagree with it, it is worthless anecdote that proves nothing. </p>
<p>By the way, I think the legacy boost is an area in which URMs and recent immigrants have a legitimate beef against the system.</p>