<p>
</p>
<p>I couldn’t agree more. Dbate, please consider that deeply.</p>
<p>No, I didn’t mean stupid. I meant homosexual, because it sounded as if I was enamored with him.</p>
<p>Yeah, what they said. ^^^</p>
<p>“Gates Home Security” – saw it on Youtube, and it’s hilarious. Thanks for letting us know about it.</p>
<p>um ok first of all a 2100 and a 3.5 is not harvard quality. I was on track and even he admits that he wouldn have gotten in without affirmative action.
He did track and volnteered 100 hours and I helped edit his essays. I can confidently say that while he had a solid app, it matched schools like Penn lehigh and nyu, not harvard
And I don’t understand the comment about not speaking Italian. I’m not going to abandon my culture and my familys history to avoid comments. Black people can do tons of things to avoid comments as wel, but it would require them to conform to the views of a few jackasses. </p>
<p>my friend and I are on good terms, and he agrees with me that it is kind of unfair that he has a leg up. I did not bring thhis up by the way. He brought this up by himself.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Please read what I write before you respond so you can understand what I am saying. I was referring to the general admissions pool, not to our school. Ivies and top schools evaluate student within both contexts. In the school context, he did not deny anyone per se, only because his applications to the hyper-selectives were not common with anyone more qualified than him. However, such schools notoriously take only one kids from a small school, which means he had the potential to do so. In the larger applicant pool, obviously he denied someone a spot, as they have a cap on the number they can accept. I’ll address this further below so you can properly see your misunderstanding.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Again, please read what I wrote. I do think he was deserving of attendance, but considering the current situation in admissions, I don’t see him getting the three acceptances he did with his stats and no boost from affirmative action.</p>
<p>What I like most,though, is your laughably incorrect assumption I am mad at him because his acceptances directly impacted mine. I am not mad at that, as I’ve stated before, but at his ease in garnering such acceptances. We applied to only one school in the RD round together, a lower Ivy to which both of us were accepted. I got into a HYPS school, which I will be attending, and I am certainly not mad he denied me from attending one. Not making such racist assumptions would be lovely.</p>
<p>I need to eat, and will address the rest later.</p>
<p>And seriously, jumping on him over what was obviously intended to mean literally homosexual? You aren’t the PC police at all…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Idk about that, when I meet the people who got into Yale it seemed like everyone also got into Harvard, Stanford, or Princeton. I was actually like the only one NOT to get into multiple top schools and I was the black one, lol. So I think it happens alot more than people think.</p>
<p>So you meant you really do speak Italian as a group? I wouldn’t suggest that you stop speaking Italian. I thought you meant that people could just somehow tell you were Italian and made comments. I can’t understand why speaking Italian would merit a slur, but I guess some people will comment on anything they don’t understand.</p>
<p>Finishing up…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, which is why I didn’t deserve a boost (and didn’t receive one). I just don’t think he needed one, either.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>They evaluate in both contexts, as I said in my previous posts.Regarding his opportunities, he had many given because of his wealth - music is the easiest one to think of in regards to ECs - and access to every test prep material he desired. While his achievement was partially a result of his motivation, it was certainly assisted by his socioeconomic status.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Qualified, yes. Overqualified to the point of multiple HYPS acceptances without racial consideration, no. His scores weren’t typical HYPS scores, especially not at HYP. Your case was an aberration, and I’m glad (actually, proud) that Yale accepted you where H and P did not. Not all minorities accepted deserve it, sorry. You clearly do, which is why I like Yale’s decision.</p>
<p>Also, there really is no need to assuage my fears anymore. I’m done with applications, and heading to a HYPS school like you are. That doesn’t preclude me from reflecting on the college admissions process I underwent, and analyzing it. From my perspective, race is weighed too heavily, and was responsible for that particular student’s application success.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Unfortuantley the comments like the above breed a type of psychological standard that minorities are substandard. I mean even in your friends case, and mine, people attributed acceptance to race, which is demeaning at best. The innocuously comment that he gained entrance premised on race, ultimately undermines all he worked hard for so try to see it from his perspective or other minorities perspective as well. I will heartily admit that race plays a factor in some admissions decisions, but I think that it is a marginal benefit, and given the entirety of the socioeconomic conditions in America one that is worth it.</p>
<p>I don’t believe you were assisted by race, considering the Harvard and Princeton rejections, but I do believe he was. You’ll have to explicate further on how attributing his acceptance to race undermines what he worked for. Many other white and Asian kids with better stats worked just as hard as he did, perhaps against worse conditions, and were rejected while he was accepted. Stating race caused his acceptance does not marginalize the work he did, but it honestly describes the reason for his ultimate acceptance. He needed the EC effort to get the racial consideration (although not necessarily the grades/test scores), but it was affirmative action that ended up making him so happy on March 31.</p>
<p>I do agree that affirmative action is needed to some extent, but not racially based AA like the PC advocates here are supporting. The kid in question was rich and not denied any opportunity - did he really need the admissions boost over a poor Asian applicant with better scores who was rejected? It’s why I’ve maintained since I was given the picture of elite college admissions, that socioeconomic status should be the only consideration in granting acceptances to less academically qualified applicants over those near perfection.</p>
<p>Also, I forgot to address this earlier. I can identify with you about seeing students with multiple HYPS acceptances at my future college, whereas my sole HYPS acceptance was said college. However, the only students I know of that received them were either overqualified with a 2300+/some amazing talent, athletes, or minorities. The student in question had no amazing talent, no 2300, and was not a recruited athlete, which leaves one option - his race. As racist as it may sound, it is being accurate and honest to state this was the primary reason for his success in the admissions process.</p>
<p>“So, if just once in your life you have been insulted by a black person due to your race, count yourself lucky and use your pain to empathize with people who had many such encounters, and that includes encounters that involved their being legally prevented from doing things like even using the library due to their race.”
Northstar mom
You don’t know anything about me and what you say is insulting. First you are assuming I can’t empathize with black people who have had encounters with racist whites. You also assume that I have never had such an encounter before or very rarely did.
I grew up as the only white kid in my class. During this time I both witnessed my friends harrassed by ignorant racist white people and was harrassed and racially insulted by ignorant black people because of my race.
The women I encountered were just rude. Once again you try to justify this behavior based on supposed past experience. I will once again say if we keep justifying behavior based on the past we will never move forward. We have to call out racist actions on both sides and not allow it to happen. We also need to take people as individuals and not make assumptions based upon skin color when considering their lives and experiences.</p>
<p>keymom posted:
“You don’t know anything about me and what you say is insulting. First you are assuming I can’t empathize with black people who have had encounters with racist whites. You also assume that I have never had such an encounter before or very rarely did.”</p>
<p>Furthermore, Northstarmom’s post infers that your being wronged by those extremely rude women was somehow appropriate payback for what they have have endured due to racism in their pasts, even though those affronts did not come from you. It’s at if Northstarmom is contending that two wrongs somehow make a right, or at least that you had it coming as some sort of twisted retribution for past sins of whites. Yes, that is insulting.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The elite colleges will never replace race-based Affirmative Action with socioeconomic Affirmative Action. Such a program requires the presumption that being poor and black in America is the same as being poor and white in America. That’s hardly the case. Your typical black kid in the ghetto is much worse off than your typical white kid in rural Appalachia.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, it doesn’t. It requires the presumption that a rich black kid or rich Hispanic kid has more opportunity than a poor white or Asian kid, and thus can appear as a better or more accomplished applicant on their submissions to the universities.</p>
<p>To add to the discussion over keymom’s incident, its rather disturbing that anyone would justify rudeness based on past racism, as I noted before and defended effectively. Minorities do nothing to ensure racial equality if they are themselves contributing to racism - exactly why Sotomayor’s Ricci v. DeStefano decision was misguided. Racism won’t be eliminated until we as a society move beyond race, which is why the Supreme Court’s more rational ruling in the case was perfect. It forced qualifications to be taken into account, rather than race, which is really how we should be determining promotion for such an important service. I don’t see why it is so difficult for some to understand how this works.</p>
<p>“You don’t know anything about me and what you say is insulting. First you are assuming I can’t empathize with black people who have had encounters with racist whites. You also assume that I have never had such an encounter before or very rarely did.”</p>
<p>It can be hard to get across via writing what would be easy to convey verbally. What I was trying to get across was IF you have had only one time in which black people made racist comments at you, you are lucky compared to the experiences that most middle aged black people have had with white people.</p>
<p>I wasn’t assuming that what you described was your only such experience. I was saying that IF it was, then compared to most black people who are middle aged, you are fortunate.</p>
<p>I do think that many white people have difficulty empathizing with the scars and sensitivities that many middle aged and older black Americans have due to how black people historically had been treated in this country, particularly before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Understandably, it can be hard to imagine how one would look at the world, oneself and others if --no matter where one lived in this country-- there were many things – including very ordinary things like trying on a hat in a store – that one couldn’t do or had to be cautious of doing due to one’s race. Your being a rare white person who has been in the minority in this country probably gives you an unusual perspective about these things.</p>
<p>I have not talked about history to justify what those black women did to you. What they did was rude, insulting, wrong, and hurtful.</p>
<p>I was, though, attempting to explain why the unexpected sight of a policeman at his door could have shaken a tired, sick (bronchial infection) Henry Louis Gates out of his usual equanimity. </p>
<p>I have never suggested that just because anyone has been the recipient of insults, they have the right to go out and hurt other people. People who have been insulted by others certainly have the right to feel hurt and angry, but they don’t have the right to lash out in kind. As Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”</p>
<p>And, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. "</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Thanks for clearing that up, dbate. But for the record, your description of your friendship with this guy did not in anyway sound to me as if you were “enamored” with him. It sounded like you trusted him a great deal, and believed he was a true blue friend. I understand that guys seldom have a friend in whom they feel they can confide everything, and the fact that you found you were wrong about this guy must have hurt a great deal. It never occurred to me that because you felt he was an especially close friend, that it meant you harbored romantic feelings toward him. </p>
<p>However, I’ve come to observe that a lot of young men today use the word, “gay” to describe behavior that they think is silly or stupid. I had to confront my own son his use of this term last year. He admitted he’d never considered how hurtful it was to attach the word “gay” to socially awkward behavior.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, it does. Because socioeconomic AA would probably just be a slightly more sensitive race-based Affirmative Action. The average poor black student would still get slightly more lenient admission standards than the average poor white student because the average poor black student is more disadvantaged. In such a scenario, AA is still race-based,it’s just sensitive to socioeconomic status. </p>
<p>HYP has already begun a similar program. They and a few other elite colleges will probably be the only schools to implement any sort of socioeconomic status. Most of other colleges are either too uncompetitive or strapped for cash.</p>
<p>Good luck on your crusade against AA, though.</p>
<p>Evidence that African Americans – including Gates --can have reason to be distrustful of police, not only due to things that happened in America’s past, but also due to African Americans knowing that some (not all) police have sentiments like the ones expressed below. Some police really are racist and think it’s fine to use their positions to victimize black people. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that the below cop wouldn’t have risked sending such a mass e-mail if he hadn’t assumed that many of his police and National Guard peers would agree with him. </p>
<p>"A Boston, Massachusetts, police officer who sent a mass e-mail in which he referred to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. as “banana-eating” and a “bumbling jungle monkey” has been placed on administrative leave and faces losing his job.</p>
<p>Officer Justin Barrett, 36, who is also an active member of the National Guard, sent an e-mail to some fellow Guard members, as well as the Boston Globe, in which he vented his displeasure with a July 22 Globe column about Gates’ controversial arrest.</p>
<p>The columnist, Yvonne Abraham, supported Gates’ actions, asking readers, “Would you stand for this kind of treatment, in your own home, by a police officer who by now clearly has no right to be there?”</p>
<p>In his e-mail, which was posted on a local Boston television station’s Web site, Barrett declared that if he had “been the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC [oleoresin capsicum, or pepper spray] deserving of his belligerent noncompliance.”</p>
<p>Barrett used the “jungle monkey” phrase four times, three times referring to Gates and once referring to Abraham’s writing as “jungle monkey gibberish…”</p>
<p>According to a statement from Boston police, Commissioner Edward Davis took action immediately upon learning of Barrett’s remarks, stripping the officer of his gun and badge. Barrett is “on administrative leave pending the outcome of a termination hearing.”"</p>
<p>[‘Jungle</a> monkey’ e-mail jeopardizes Boston officer’s job - CNN.com](<a href=“http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/29/massachusetts.officer.email/index.html]'Jungle”>'Jungle monkey' e-mail jeopardizes Boston officer's job - CNN.com)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t recall anyone anywhere in this thread who said the rude and race-based comments made by those women to keymom were in any way justified. Quotes please.</p>