Those stories about applicants pretending to be black etc., are urban legends. Universities are on to that trick. And of course if you deliberately lie, that is cause for immediate rejection or explusion.
Socioeconomic AA? Clearly justified. Poverty makes things difficult, especially getting into and paying for college.
Racial AA? (Like that one Nigerian guy who got into 8 Ivies recently, but lived in a middle class family in NYC) Stupid as hell and unjustified. It doesn’t do anything to “pay back” for slavery, discrimination, and oppression in the past. How many minority students that get boosted by AA experienced any of those 3 things? Zero. None. Nadie.
Discriminating against whites (and asians) in order to pay back for discrimination against blacks, native americans, etc. is stupid. Two wrongs don’t make a right (bit of a stretch to apply it here, but somewhat makes sense). We can’t move forward as a society if we keep discriminating (no matter the victim).
Equality means treating people equally. Racial AA (which is CONSPICUOUS in college admissions in several cases) is not equality.
Now yes, some of the black/native/hispanic people that got into a good college got in because they were clearly a perfect candidate (near perfect scores, good EC’s, etc.), and others because they fought poverty throughout their life. But their are several cases of well-off/middle class minorities getting accepted with substandard EC’s and grades.
@GranTurismo330 if you’re an immigrants child regardless you’ll likely experience racism because of the color of your skin. just because you’re an immigrant doesn’t mean the police will not stop you, or that you will not experience institutional racism.
slavery, discrimination, oppression? why don’t you take a look at your african history. if you can say that none of that happened in africa, then you can read. those things of the past are still affected the continent.
there’s an indian girl, gasp–an orm, that was accepted to all eight so take a look at that, maybe you should have held your tongue. anybody can do it honestly, but it mostly just takes a bit of luck.
How can an Asian student avoid being noted as Asian? If a college does a personal interview, I suppose they could figure it out, right? And then use that to help determine admission or not, correct? What is wrong with calling oneself “white” when one is Asian? This would allow the Asian applicant to be treated as an equal to whites.
As you may have seen from the most comprehensive study, whites with the same qualifications have three times greater a probability of acceptance to Ivy League schools.
Can an Asian student just say, “I am white, so prove that I am not”?
[Quote]
just because you’re an immigrant doesn’t mean the police will not stop you
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(These are my words, I don’t know why they are in quotes)
Why should the police not be allowed to stop immigrants if they suspect something? Non-immigrants get stopped all the time.
Asians are people of color, whites are not. @chrisceeaustin 
Also for those of you who clearly don’t understand affirmative action I recommend watching a documentary on YouTube called the blue eye green eye experiment. Watch the whole thing. You’ll learn that socioeconomic status has little to do with AA for very basic reasons. Ever since I started school, I have automatically been looked down upon. It affected me throughout middle school. When I’d get all As or something or I did well on a test people would go insane like “I DIDNT KNOW YOU WERE SMART!” or "WHOA YU ACTUALLY GET GOOD GRADES and the worst “DUDE YOU OBVIOUSLY CHEATED” That had me feeling like i was dumb and that I wasn’t in my place. I messed up all the way up to freshman year. During my sophomore year, i was lucky ebough to experience things that changed my look on school and i quickly reapplied myself. God bless AA. If it weren’t for all the non-POCs I grew up with constantly demoralizing me I’d be at the top of the damn game.
@albert69 Yawn. I think you know what I was getting at. If not, then fine.
huh? we are not treated as people of color. we are treated as if we are far more privileged than whites. It is three times more difficult for an Asian with the same qualifications as a white to get into an Ivy League university. (see the study and the book, whose title I do not remember right now)
Now, can anyone tell me if an Asian must identify himself as Asian, or if there is some law against identifying as white? Just to get an equal opportunity with whites.
I personally should have identified as white. While I am Asian, that is not what it says on my birth certificate. I likely would have gotten into some decent university programs if I had id’ed as white.
Now I am concerned for certain other people in my life.
Not all of us Asians are willing to study all the time and not all of us want to make our children do so. But the Ivy League qualified Asians are being pushed down into the very good state universities, making it all the more difficult for the excellent but not top of the class Asians to get into desired programs in the better state colleges.
But if one is “white” rather than “Asian,” one’s chances are much better.
@excanuck99 Urban legends NOT. Actually knew some girl applying to Stanford a few years ago who claimed to be “African-American” but was actually a while immigrant from South Africa. Professional counselors are now advising Asians to change their last names (e.g., from Chan to Chancellor, and from Hu to Hughes) - very easy to do in the US and it’s all legal. A friend already did with her son’s last name. It’s only going to happen a lot more often. @chrisceeaustin Just skip the personal interviews!
@hidalgo23 thank you for the info. that sounds like a major sacrifice. not sure if I would advise anyone to change their name – it’s just too much. There are quite a few “whites” and “blacks” and “Hispanics” with Asian names.
Thomas Chong. Apollo Ono. Just to name a couple who can legitimately claim whiteness.
Why cannot an Asian with an Asian name claim they are white? That should work, shouldn’t it?
Otherwise, people like my friend who has a child adopted from Latin America, a child adopted from China, and a biological child would have to have all his children subjected to onerous AA policies. Instead, one of his children can claim Hispanic, one can claim white, and the poor child born in China is stuck with being Asian. While they all have an Asian last name.
Here we go again with the posters who imply that some races are inherently superior to others. So so sad
hidalgo: if you intentionally misstate your race, that would be dishonesty and your offer could be revoked. Better to say “prefer not to answer”.
I’m gonna say what I posted in another thread a while ago.
Affirmative Action is not a reparation for Slavery, or even the Civil War. It is not about the past, it is about the present. Because today in America blacks are viewed and treated differently from whites, and have to overcome normalized stereotypical thinking perpetrated by not only the majority, but other races. It is outrageous how often overachieving black students from majority black districts are deemed as “acting white” if they do well in school. Thinking that black is lesser has been normalized in society, and look no further than the “Doll Test” or the “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” experience if you need convincing of that.
Beyond that, I want to address people like @GranTurismo330 that say we need to move towards “equality for all races”, and that anything that doesn’t support that is wrong. And I’m going to be honest and say that that is flawed thinking, or at least partially dishonest thinking. The majority of people that say we need to move towards “True Equality” or decry about “Reverse Racism” don’t even tend to notice status quo examples of racism. They don’t care that blacks face 20% more prison-time for the same crimes that whites perpetrate. They don’t tend to care that the war on drugs was directly targeted at poor-black communities despite the fact that whites have higher rates of drug use (the reason why so many “Black Males” are in prison – victimless crime), they ignore obvious instances of racial profiling by the police, they ignore that black students are more likely to face harsher in-school discipline than whites, they ignore instances of police shootings motivated by said racial stereotypes. they ignore microagressions that occur everyday for black youth, and the fact that people with black names are less likely to be hired, and that employers upon finding out that an applicant was black tended to be more critical of that person’s resume. Literally affirmative action is only a major issue at highly-selective colleges, and those colleges only have student bodies where 8%-12% of the kids they accept are black. At a school like Columbia, that equates to about ~150 kids in each incoming class. Even if we assume one fourth of those admits are "underqualified’ (which is really still pushing it), you’re making an issue out of 40 kids going to Columbia out of the over 33K that applied.
I am going to happily mark “Black/AA” (or whatever) on my college apps because it is one of the few times in life where being black is an advantage rather than a negative that I carry on my back on a daily basis. In my opinion, the reason why so many whites say they are against affirmative action is NOT because they believe in pure and total racial/gender/sexual/ equality (otherwise, the majority of people would be reforming a criminal justice system, educational system or corporate system with the racial bents I described), but because this is their first time ever experiencing any time of institutional racial discrimination, and they don’t like how it feels when the shoe’s on the other foot. And frankly, I think that this helps level the playing field, and until people deal with institutional and localized racism that blacks are forced to face, I’m not going to feel bad about Affirmative Action in the slightest.
So where does all this talk put multiracial folks? My son identifies as Asian and European, and is part (not much) African as well.
AA based solely on race is bullcrap. It is just like someone getting a legacy boost and a URM boost - are those not in place for completely opposite reasons?
I know poor white folks who are at least as downtrodden as many blacks. And I know rich whites, rich Hispanics, rich blacks, all of whom have kids who grew up with privilege and are going to very good schools. One rich Hispanic kid was two year behind my son in math and got into the same top engineering school as well as another top engineering school. He is an only child, house is worth 10 million at least, father made big in real estate here and in South America. Does he REALLY need a boost to get into a top school? Was his life ever disadvantaged?
I have Hispanic nephews who grew up not knowing a word of Spanish. Their mom died when they were young. Their name is not Spanish, and their upbringing was upper middle class in a nice suburb. Why do they “need” an AA boost?
Honestly, my nephews’ mother’s family is so tight with them, they actually have a serious advantage being third generation American of Hispanic descent. They get job opportunities and places to live from their extended family.
(And a white South African is African, why is there any question? My son’s friend from South Africa is white, and he listed “African-American” because that is what he is. His family was in South Africa for generations. It’s like saying I’m not American because I’m not Native American.)
^ Because it’s easier to create a general rule rather than to specifically look at income when most of these schools are really trying for racial diversity without wanting to dole out full financial aid to more applicants if they can help it. And because being rich doesn’t exclude you from some of the examples of societal or institutionalized racism I described.
Also I think the term African-American is more or less ridiculous because it allows white SA to benefit from AA, when it should be reserved for people associated with the race that experiences the hardships I described above.
Right, and we think Harvard or Stanford don’t have enough money to give more aid to poorer applicants regardless of race?
And what do you think of the fact that Affirmative Action DISCRIMINATES against another minority in Asians? Are you okay with that? I freely admit we don’t face the same discrimination in the job market or the criminal justice system (personally I believe reforming these two would solve the problem at its root instead of a roundabout method of affirmative action that mainly only impacts richer URMs and may not even help them) as African Americans, but we still face discrimination as a minority; the assumption about Asians in the workforce is that they’re just good for crunching numbers and useless for anything beyond that.
@theanaconda it’s less about what these schools /can/ do, and what they /want/ to do. I think that colleges may see: 1- lowering the standards for low income students and then 2- paying for them completely, may not be viewed as advantageous for/by them.
I also believe reforming the legal/job market does more good than AA, but until America is willing to correct it, I’m going to take the little advantages I’m given.
Now, to address your comments about Asians. In short, I don’t think affirmative action is what discriminates against Asians, I think what discriminates against Asians is the policies these schools try to admit after the fact. AA simply argues that minorities are discriminated against in society, and rectification should be done through higher education. Unfortunately, schools deal with this by coming up with ideal ranges: (~8% black, ~8% hispanic, ~8% asian, ~70% white) to fill with their students. Asians are then harmed, because to make sure the school is “PWI enough” or (not too Asian), they begin to limit the number of Asian applicants, which mean whites also get advantages in the admissions game over Asians. I believe there is a way to practice Affirmative Action / diversity to the point where it doesn’t result in schools resulting to a “race range” system to harming Asian applicants, but I’m just not sure how I’d go about that. To me Affirmative Action should be more of an ideal, than a concrete policy at this point. But honestly, since you freely admit that Asians don’t suffer from the same brand of institutionalized racism that blacks suffer from in legal/societal/educational in general, I really don’t see not getting into Harvard as the biggest affront to society.
@TheAtlantic wrote:
But isn’t it black people who do this to other black people? I’m not aware of non-black people discouraging black students from achieving.
Certain names are potential liabilities no matter what race. If I had a girl, I wouldn’t name her Cinnamon, Sapphire, or Destiny, not because those names are associated with any particular race, but because the first thing a lot of people will think of is pole-dance rather than CEO.
You complain that you are oppressed by racial stereotyping, so your solution is to stereotype people by race?
What does “reforming” the job market mean? Racial quotas?
Please provide documentation of a single instance where this actually happens
Wouldn’t it be more sensible to apply rectification at the K-12 level? Especially since the majority of students don’t go on to college.
If you want to argue that it won’t kill other people if they don’t get into Harvard, then by the same token it shouldn’t kill you either.
I do indeed believe Blacks experience harsher racism than other racial minority groups, but your arguments above just comes off as an incoherent rant.