<p>The black race is the most discriminated against race in world history, period, end of story. That discrimination still occurs today but to a much less extreme extent. </p>
<p>The fact is that people of certain races generally try to live up to the stereotypes that society presents to them:</p>
<p>Asians are stereotyped to be smart/bookworms, so what do the majority of them do? Get high grades.</p>
<p>Blacks are stereotyped to be athletes/rappers and nothing else. Face it, the general stereotype is that black people aren’t smart; which is why you have so many living up to that stereotype.</p>
<p>Because of this, you get a huge disparity in academic performance on average for these races. So yes, affirmative action is fair to be used as a method of counteracting this disparity.</p>
<p>So I’m Chinese. Should I just not fill that part out? Because I heard that being Asian is a disadvantage… (even though my last name gives it away)</p>
<p>No need to fill it out. Since I graduated from high school, I’ve noticed every year that more and more students are declining to self-identify. As tokenadult shows in his opening posts, many elite universities admit significant numbers of students who decline to self-identify.</p>
<p>Regardless of your stance on affirmative action, that is a good thing.</p>
<p>I know of no college that admits to having a quota on different races. That is illegal. So if you have evidence that a college actually has a quota (not just somebody’s rumor), then it would be a good idea to report the college to the federal Department of Education Office for Civil Rights </p>
<p>which has initial enforcement responsibility for investigating claims that colleges are discriminating on the basis of race. Most states have separate state laws that would also prohibit such quotas.</p>
<p>You are entitled to your own opinion in a free country. In my personal opinion (I’m not claiming to speak for anyone else in this), it is good that the law currently disagrees with you. Any college applicant, by law, has the right to decline to self-report race or ethnicity. If you look back to the beginning of this long thread (into which the question you were responding to was merged, I think), you will see that many, many thousands of college applicants decline to report any “race” or ethnicity each year, and nonetheless are admitted to very good colleges. If I could redesign the federal forms, something like “human,” or at least “postracial,” would be one of the choices on the forms. </p>
<p>Good luck to everyone applying to college this year. I’m hearing good things about the college experiences of the new freshmen I know, some of whom just started classes last week.</p>
<p>This is a misstatement of the law. If a private college has an explicit quota for minority students (as in the Bakke case), or an explicit point system favoring them (as in the Gratz case), the private college will LOSE if the case is litigated, just as surely as the public colleges that set the court precedents lost.</p>
<p>People can be proud of having ancestors from this or that place, and they can be proud of emphasizing their common humanity too. There are proverbial sayings in most world cultures that show that it is by no means shameful to identify with humankind as a whole.</p>
<p>I would just leave it blank if it weren’t for the fact that my essay centers a lot around being a Muslim and Pakistani. It wouldn’t really make sense to decline to self-identify in this case, right?</p>
<p>You can always identify any aspect of your background that you think will be advantageous to your application in the optional parts of your application forms (such as your personal essay). It’s up to you whether or not you want to mark the optional race and ethnicity questionnaire–the law allows you to leave it blank. </p>
<p>I dream of a day when people are judged by their merit and achievement rather than by their race. In other words I dream of a day when there is no question on race in the application forms.</p>
<p>^ Dream on, mofoshort. Race will be a factor as long as there is an achievement gap. I’m no professor or anything but it seems pretty clear that academic achievement is tied to both intelligence and culture. It looks to me that we humans share equal intelligence and that no race is inherently smarter or dumber than other races. But there’s a huge culture difference from race to race. Asians really value academic achievement and from what I could tell from my friends nothing is more important to that culture. But African American culture is usually a lot different. African Americans also hope that their children do well in school but they aren’t obessed like Asians. I had a Asian friend who got a report card with five A’s and a C and his parents about died. He was grounded for like a month and his parents thought his future was in jeopardy. What African American family would ever react like that to five A’s and a C? So even though humans share equal intelligence cultural differences will mean that there will always be an achievement gaps and as long as there is an achievement gap there will be politicians and academics who will use race to try to even the field. I think that’s just how life is people.</p>
<p>“African Americans also hope that their children do well in school but they aren’t obessed like Asians.”</p>
<p>I also think many African Americans do not believe their potential achievement in school is the solution to their most pressing problems or needs.</p>
<p>Not sure most “Americans” believe that either.</p>
<p>“I also think many African Americans do not believe their potential achievement in school is the solution to their most pressing problems or needs.”</p>
<p>As an African I assure you that your statement applies only to those African Americans whose ancestors were raised in this country. There’s a reason why most African Americans in Ivy League schools were not raised in the US but in Africa and the Caribbean. My parents were very much like Asian parents. Although we arrived in this country poor and lived in the hood, my parents demanded that we achieve scholastically, and we did. They knew that academic achievement would be the solution to our family’s financial problems, and it was. Regrettably, a majority of African American students raised in this country have been convinced by so-called “community leaders” to believe that success is not possible, so they opt not to put forth a strong effort in school. In my opinion our leaders are the root of the problem. What we need is to stop blaming others for our failures. We need to take responsibility. However, whenever an African American man of power – Bill Cosby, Clarence Thomas, etc. – asks our community to look in the mirror, whenever they suggest that perhaps our problems can be solved through individual initiative and not through government programs, they get lambasted and shouted down. </p>
<p>My prayer is that someday the African American culture will truly reflect the culture of the Africa, at least when it comes to education.</p>
<p>I suppose I agree. My husband is first gen, born in Jamaica, and I am second, my mom’s family from a tiny island most have never heard of. Still, I don’t think it is quite that simple. </p>
<p>My dad’s family goes way back in Alabama, and though he was essentially a share cropper, even in the 1920’s it was obvious to him that academics were where his effort would pay off. </p>
<p>Since him, “we” are all a blessed with a mix of intellect and hard work, but not all of us ( in our family) will be best served by thinking that putting all our effort and self esteem, to the exclusion of our other blessings, into academics. </p>
<p>Yes, we should strive to be the best students we can be, but we are not all going to get the same reinforcement for our efforts. So with my kids, “third generation” in, I encourage my husband to appreciate balance. When I focus on positives, he encourages me not to always compare our kids to how bad things COULD be.</p>
<p>"whenever they suggest that perhaps our problems can be solved through individual initiative and not through government programs, they get lambasted and shouted down. "</p>
<p>I think not everyone agrees it has to be one or the other, and not both.</p>
<p>BTW (what part of Africa we you from? I spent a month in Nigeria) during medical school. Looks like you have lived in NYC; Husband and I “grew up” in Brooklyn and Queens, and met in the Bronx.</p>