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<p>Well said. This should have been the end of the thread.</p>
<p>To the dude who said the reason women don’t make as much as men do because they don’t pursue high-earning degrees… Google the name “Lilly Ledbetter.” Read her wikipedia page. This was in the news as recently as February. My mother used to work at a newspaper where her male coworker with the exact same job, less education, and less seniority managed to make $10,000 per year more than her. I know it’s really easy to justify prejudice away when it don’t affect you, but it’s much harder when they do.</p>
<p>Thank you panther124. I’m tired of people turning the tables, intelligently avoiding the question, or playing the ‘I’m discriminated too!’ or ‘That’s human nature. Get over it.’ character. Yes, you’ve been discriminated before and humans are cruel, but do we turn a blind eye to the problem? I’ve seen this in the real and cyber world so many times.</p>
<p>Why can’t people admit that they have problems that need sorting out or that they do have an advantage over whatever minority is being discussed?</p>
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<p>I was referring to bachelor’s degrees.</p>
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<p>That’s sexist unless it actually happens, and if it actually happens it wouldn’t affect the year-round statistics.</p>
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<p>Definitively, NO, NO and NO. I hate Communism soo much, it’s an ideology promoting (among other evils) abolition of private property and a kind of “mediocracy” that has nothing to do with human natural impulse to advance, develop, conquer and prosper. It also reduces the individual and its importance in society. No way, Karl Marx got it wrong.</p>
<p>My angry towards AA is determined by a deep sense of justice that people should not be subject to discrimination, even if it is “justified” as a mean to correct other previous century-old discrimination/segregation effects.</p>
<p>AA is the liberal corolary of “separate but equal” philosophy, especially considering situations in which taxpayer money is involved. And I don’t think any college but a few Christian schools and so provide education without relying on Pell Grants, subzided loans etc. </p>
<p>By the way, there are a lot of anti-discriminating policies set up by laws affecting people and institutions who contract or take money from the government, like Fair Housing, American With Disabilities Act, etc.</p>
<p>QwertyKey: Illegal, of course. But what blue collar worker has the money and time to hire an attorney and file suit against a company when they really need to work to make ends meet? That’s why this kind of stuff still goes on: in many settings, people don’t really have the realistic ability to pursue legal recourse against this kind of discrimination.</p>
<p>Now that we’re on the subject, I remember watching a video in my anthropology class, where they interviewed managers in the service industry, namely fast food restaurants. Albeit, the video was a bit dated, but they stated that they didn’t feel it was necessary to provide adequate wages and benefits to their female employees because they would most likely be receiving support and benefits from their husbands. This, of course, was patently false, but people make all sorts of excuses for such practices. </p>
<p>I have actually heard the pregnancy explanation, and I could see how this could be somewhat valid, really. If a woman takes time off, switches employers after spending a couple years being a stay at home mom, etc., it would naturally slow her progression up the corporate ladder, so this actually could be a legitimate explanation for some of the differences. I wouldn’t consider it sexist to give a position to a person who has a track record of not taking extended leaves over someone who does. It would be discriminatory if they avoided promoting women in general because they might get pregnant, though.</p>
<p>eurograd, I’m against AA for a completely different reason. I don’t think colleges should be allowed to socially engineer. With the exception of athletes, colleges should be forced to pick the most qualified students instead of trying to engineer their college atmosphere. That said, it’s impossible to abolish AA so just suck it up and stop complaining.</p>
<p>Why with the exception of athletes? Lol.</p>
<p>Because athletes are special and always will be… apparently. ;P</p>
<p>Athletes are generally recruited in their junior year, before they even apply. They should still have academic standards varying from college to college. comiclover, you go to UT Austin and don’t care about athletics? OK.</p>
<p>LogicWarrior: I already did that, but I hope that as discrimination felt into disgrace in the 1950’s and by 1970 the legal framework against it was already laid down, same will happen with AA. 40 years of AA are more than enough to promote “advancement” of “underrepresented” groups.</p>
<p>Why would you exempt athletes of your non-socially engineer policy anyway?</p>
<p>Well, it does take skill, dedication, and hard work to play a sport at an impressive level, just like being academically rigorous. I know I can’t catch a football or pin someone to a mat AT ALL, so props to all the athletes out there. So don’t think that athletics are a walk in the park every time. You’ve gotta give them their rightful credit.</p>
<p>That being said, I don’t think an athletically rigorous hopeful should get in over an academically rigorous one just because they play a sport. The point of college is to get an education in the hopes of receiving a well-paying job that you love. Athletics and other activities are just bonuses of the college experience.</p>
<p>“comiclover, you go to UT Austin and don’t care about athletics? OK.”</p>
<p>How did you know I didn’t care about athletics? That’s kinda weird since I didnt say. xD</p>
<p>I went to one football game here, the second football game I have been to in my life. It was hot and boring and I don’t plan on going again. I didn’t know what an Aggie or Longhorn was until 10th grade so I never knew much about it. </p>
<p>The only sport I like is Hockey and that’s playing it verses watching it and there isn’t much talk about that here.</p>
<p>There are a certain amount of spots reserved for athletic scholarships. No one has ever had their spot taken by an athlete.</p>
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<p>I take issue with this statement. It’s disgusting. For one, the discrimination of the ‘underrepresented’ groups was some ten times as long as the advancement. A few hundred years of slavery plus a century of institutional discrimination certainly count for more than forty years of help. </p>
<p>Affirmative Action has only just begun to really come to fruition. Think about it: It was implemented in the 70’s. Consequently, only a very small amount of minorities have actually benefitted from the initiative. People born before affirmative action certainly weren’t going to suddenly start swarming universities. They were born into a world in which the only work open to minorities was blue collar work. The young adults at that time were among the last generation of workers that expected to work at their company until retirement. Most of those workers were blue-collar factory workers. The generation that’s set to actually benefit from affirmative action wasn’t born until the late 70’s and 80’s, when college-going culture began to penetrate American society at large. In reality, the minorities that are inclined (not necessarily equipped) to actually benefit from affirmative action have just started to go hit the workforce. </p>
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<p>Picking students based on their SAT scores alone is social engineering. Picking students based on any real criteria is social engineering. If you don’t want to social engineer, you pick students at random. You don’t have a problem with social engineering. You have a problem with the perceived lack of merit at the top universities. I find this attitude among the majority to be jarring. Historically, merit has never been much of a priority for the top colleges; creating prominence through research and graduating successful alumni has always been the primary goal. </p>
<p>Harvard has never cared about the traditional definition of merit. The University wants to identify as many potentially successful alumni as possible. That, in part, is why Harvard began to practice affirmative action on its own. In the 60’s and 70’s it saw a generation of African-American leaders and wanted a piece of the pie. And so it went through the lengths necessary to admit African-American students with potential.</p>
<p>That’s not out of character for Harvard at all. That’s what it’s been doing since its founding.</p>
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<p>Applicants compete against other applicants in their respective racial pools. No one has ever had their spot taken by a person of another race.</p>
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<p>I don’t buy this theory. I have never owned a slave in my life, so therefore I don’t owe anyone anything. It also doesn’t make sense to me that slavery years in must equal AA years out. It doesn’t take 300 years to fix a problem.</p>
<p>On a side note, couldn’t we just remove the “race box” from admissions and just admit the most qualified applicants (as based on their academic and extracurricular achievements)?</p>
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<p>I don’t buy your rebuttal?</p>
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<p>Is anyone taking anything from you? Let me guess: some rich black kid took your seat at Harvard, right? You somehow owned it. Someone gave it to you. Perhaps you payed tuition already.</p>
<p>Well I’m sorry. I truly do hope that you find the black kid that stole your seat at Harvard. Just interrogate any black guy running around with a chair. Maybe you’ll find him.</p>
<p>It’s mindsets like these that bother me. Too many people think that only whites and Asians can truly deserve any real academic achievement. Any minority that’s ever gotten anything that didn’t involve a ball or a mic must have stolen it somehow. The racist undertones in this kind of thought is telling. That the universities willingly practices affirmative action is not enough to earn the ire of the majority. No, instead the people who simply apply to these schools are the ones that are the objects of contempt and outright hatred. Meanwhile, Harvard still inspires awe in the very same students that so reverently disdain affirmative action. </p>
<p>I will be blunt: This is modern racism in its purest form.</p>
<p>Why do you people hate the benefactors of affirmative action rather than the program? Why don’t you hate the universities that freely choose to practice affirmative action. There’s no federal mandate forcing them; they do so willingly. If you’re mad at someone, be mad at Harvard.</p>
<p>But maybe you can’t do that because it would surely cause cognitive dissonance. You can’t be mad at a university that never owed you anything, but you can be mad at some imaginary, dimwitted minority with average grades that took your spot. </p>
<p>That’s not racist of you. Not at all.</p>
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<p>Do you know why Harvard has never cared about the traditional definition of merit?</p>
<p>NearL, given your post #79, I would like to ask you how you feel about Jian Li’s decision to file a civil rights complaint against Princeton University in 2006. Given that he is against racial preferences, do you think he picked the right ‘target’? Or was his action still wholly unjustifiable?</p>