<p>
</p>
<p>How is it a stretch when that would be the inevitable result of their efforts and they know it?</p>
<p>Reducing black enrollment may or may not be the prime motivation of their efforts, but their efforts, if successful, will reduce black enrollment in elite colleges.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I appreciate (and am sympathetic to) the philosophical underpinnings of the debate, but let’s cut right to the point where the rubber meets the road. Will you advise your kids not to check the box?</p>
<p>“How is it a stretch when that would be the inevitable result of their efforts and they know it?”</p>
<p>I think it’s a stretch to conclude that ALL of them are motivated by resentment about black progress or fear that whites will be crowded out. Plenty of them are. But there are also individuals out there who are genuinely concerned about AA stigmatizing or un-motivating URM students (among other honest concerns).</p>
<p>The professional lobbyists in this field, taken as a group, do worry me. If you’re going to spend your career fighting injustice in this country, taking up the banner of mediocre white people strikes me as a surprising choice. I mean, that’s the worst injustice you could find? Or even the worst government-imposed injustice?</p>
<p>anyone read Shelby Steel’s (He is African American and teaches at Duke?) book, "White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era "?</p>
<p>Excerpt from Amazon</p>
<p>Steele asserts that the primary focus of the civil-rights era was a legitimate quest to remove racial barriers. In the shift to the black-power era, Steele sees a paradigm shift, away from racial uplift and agency, where blacks assume responsibility for themselves, to a “race is destiny” mode. As the counterculture merged with the civil-rights movement, America was exposed for its racial hypocrisy and, consequently, lost its moral authority. Here, “white guilt” became the moral framework for America. Steele argues that liberal whites embraced guilt for two reasons: to avoid being seen as racists and to embrace a vantage point where they could mete out benefits to disadvantaged blacks through programs such as affirmative action. Steele believes blacks made a deal with the devil by exchanging responsibility and control over their destiny for handouts. He sees a deficiency in black middle-class educational achievement, further raising questions about claims of lack of equal opportunity. Despite these omissions, the cultural analysis of America’s loss of moral authority for its exposed racism has resonance today."</p>
<p>I saw him in one segment on TV and he was attributing lack of black achievement on lack of taking personal responsibity. He said, if you examine the problems blacks are facing today, racism would rank 18th.</p>
<p>ID, I notice that you didn’t respond to the second and third sentences in my last post. Why?</p>
<p>And I agree with Hanna that it’s quite rash to think that there could be no other motivation other than wanting less URMs at top schools. I happen to think that the lowered expectations and admission requirements that come with AA are detrimental to URMs’ progress. I can’t think of a parallel situation where lowering standards helps eliminate the root problem. If you want a group to improve, you raise standards, you don’t lower them (look what raising standards for Asians has done…their academic achievement is spiraling out of control–in an upward direction).</p>
<p>But aside from the social engineering, I simply agree with the whole civil rights goal of equal opportunity without regard to race, while at the same time being aware that it’s about race-blind OPPORTUNITY, with no guarantee of equal RESULTS.</p>
<p>And about my kids and which blocks they check–thankfully there won’t be blocks to check now.</p>
<p>I think there’s a lot of merit to what Shelby Steele has to say, although I suspect that in the TV segment you quote, he was referring to <em>present</em>day_ racism ranking 18th. (I don’t think he argues that historical racism played no role in the creation of problems 1 through 17.)</p>
<p>In a way, a lot of what he is saying is a modern echo of Malcolm X (inartful paraphrase follows): don’t wait for white people to give you back what you built for them, because they never will; if you want to achieve something in this country, support your OWN community and build up your OWN institutions. It’s odd that he was seen as such a radical, because in retrospect, it was a very conservative message.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>One exception might be females in the military, including the academies. When the academies were integrated, new physical tests allowed women to enter without doing as many pushups in a minute, etc., as a male cadet, because otherwise, the result would have been a tiny handful of female cadets. But I don’t think that it’s led to any laziness or underachievement among female soldiers/sailors, or that they think less of themselves; their numbers and leadership roles have grown steadily since then.</p>
<p>FWIW, there will still be blocks to check. Colleges still need to collect this data (although students are free to not designate) for reporting requirements.</p>
<p>I was an officer in the Navy for the entire decade of the 1980’s, and the difference in physical standards based on gender were a constant target of ridicule. They were particularly insulting to the women who could meet the men’s standards, and they sabotaged the efforts of those who were working for gender equality. Like AA, the different physical training standards in the military put an official stamp of approval on the notion that one group wasn’t able to keep up with the other group. Judging from what I’ve seen in the schools my 2 daughters have been attending, the “female” push-up (with knees on the ground) seems to be a thing of the past.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This fifty year old woman can do a dozen real push-ups, and I imagine that if I had worked on it when I was younger I could have done many more than that. That said, I don’t think a woman is ever going to have as much upper body strength on average as a man. It’s a question of determining what’s enough. I know for fire fighters you need to be strong enough to drag those hoses up fire stairs. I’d imagine the military has similar needs.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>But what was the alternative? Would prospective female soldiers really be better off if the standard remained where it was and there were 1/5 as many women in each class because the other 4/5 couldn’t do the same number of chin-ups as the men no matter how hard they tried? (I’m guessing at the proportions.)</p>
<p>
Then let them collect it afterwards. If they collect it on the app, they’ll always be suspect of using it as an admissions criterion.</p>
<p>
In saner times, the issue wasn’t whether prospective female soldiers (or whatever) would be better off. The issue was: can they do what the job requires? Put more sharply, who do you want to see in the flaming window on the end of a ladder rescuing your children? A big strong man who can get them out, or your latest affirmative action hire?</p>
<p>
The military needs to be realistic. Firstly, women aren’t routinely toting guns on the front lines (I know they sometimes temporarily end up in the scenario ala Iraq). Secondly, the vast majorty of personnel in the military don’t need to have a Rambo-esque physique since the vast majority aren’t, and will never be, on the front lines. The trade-off of keeping the old physical standards for little gain versus the tremendous benefit of women in the military isn’t worth it.</p>
<p>I would imagine that there really are some jobs out there that require physical strength – for those jobs, gender isn’t important, but physical ability is. In the fireman example, I don’t care about the gender of the person at the end of the ladder, as long as he/she is strong enough to get me to safety! The reality, of course, is that most women (even those of equal size) are not as strong as men. So the practical answer is that I want a big, burly guy at the end of the ladder.</p>
<p>In the military, there are positions which don’t require physical strength. But on the battlefield, I think the side with the strongest, smartest force wins. In most cases, that means men (as far as physical strength is concerned.) Personally, I also think that most men would have to try very hard to disregard their instinct to protect a woman. Maybe someone can provide first-hand knowledge of this issue.</p>
<p>From a evolutionary standpoint, young women aren’t really expendable in war. Not that I think young men are, but that’s biology for you!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Because I largely agree with those sentences. There wasn’t much to respond to.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Where at the lowered standards?</p>
<p>We know that, last fall, UMich accepted 2415 white kids with combined SATs below 1270. We know they accepted just 714 black students below 1270. Why are the standards “lower” for black students than “white” students?</p>
<p>We know that both Cal-Berkeley and UCLA will gladly enroll white students with combined SATs below 900, if they can play football or basketball. If those standards are high enough for admission, why are we singling out black students who have much higher SATs and saying that they should not be admitted?</p>
<p>Does a black student with 1200 SATs at Yale constitute lower standards than George W Bush with 1200 SATs at Yale?</p>
<p>Most elite colleges have the highest median SAT scores in history right now (even correcting for recentering)…and the highest percentage of African American students…and the most aggressive Affirmative Action. So how is Affirmative Action lowering the standards? It seems to me that an equally valid correlation could be argued: that aggressive Affirmative Action raises median SATs. I don’t think that argument would be true, but it could be supported by the statistics if one were working an agenda.</p>
<p>I’m surprised we are even debating SAT scores. The CollegeBoard’s sole claim to their validity is that they predict first-year college performance. The University of California proved (and I thought rather conclusively) that such scores were somewhat predictive of the student body, EXCEPT for African-American and Hispanic students who, on the whole, broadly outperformed their SAT scores. </p>
<p>If one is going to measure “merit”, you need a measurement tool that measures “merit”. In the case of Black and Hispanic applicants, SATs ain’t it.</p>
<p>“In the fireman example, I don’t care about the gender of the person at the end of the ladder, as long as he/she is strong enough to get me to safety! The reality, of course, is that most women (even those of equal size) are not as strong as men. So the practical answer is that I want a big, burly guy at the end of the ladder.”</p>
<p>Most firemen aren’t pulling people out of windows. More commonly, they are crawling around on the floor of burning buildings, squeezing through tight spaces and puling people out of closets by the feet. Smaller firefighters like women have an advantage there. Women, on average, can also go much longer on one canister of oxygen, meaning they can stay inside a burning building saving people instead of coming out to refuel.</p>
<p>I don’t disagree that there are certain jobs where you need a big upper body. But sometimes brute force is an oversimplification of what’s required for the job, especially when (as with college students, or firefighters, or soldiers) there isn’t really one job; there are many different roles that make use of different skill sets. When there’s an influx of a new kind of candidate (like women), it makes sense to re-examine whether the entrance standards are doing a good job of sorting out the people who won’t excel in any role within the organization. It’s wise to have brutal physical standards for Green Berets. But requiring a smart, brave, aspiring female naval air traffic controller or army logistics coordinator to do 12 pull-ups in two minutes may cost you a lot of great candidates.</p>
<p>“In the case of Black and Hispanic applicants, SATs ain’t it.”</p>
<p>Because they don’t score well? Could lack of prepration, motivation and study be some of the reasons they don’t score well?</p>
<p>One can’t tell. I could make a much longer list than that (including much higher exposure to lead-based paints.) But one thing we know for sure: it isn’t a good predictor of their college performance. That’s well-established (and almost cost the CollegeBoard by far their largest client.)</p>
<p>And it certainly doesn’t measure more than 3 hours of “merit”, if it does that. The College Board claims you can’t prepare for it, and makes no claim that it measures either aptitude or achievement.</p>
<p>Perhaps, but all the kids I have seen who have very high SAT scores are high achieving (white, black, brown, yellow and red), High GPA, high rank, good study habbits and self esteem. Of course my sample size is not that large.</p>
<p>Well, I certainly CAN’T say the same. I know lots of kids with very high SAT scores who are total goof-offs. And plenty with high GPAs and disappointing SAT scores. </p>
<p>Either way - I can’t see why anyone would be willing to make a claim for SAT scores that the CollegeBoard doesn’t make for itself. (after all, they make money off it.)</p>