<p>Not having an iphone, flatscreen or larger car is hardly a disadvantaged family.</p>
<p>and stop nit-picking; ofcourse there are flaws in any system, it’s just much better with socioeconomic AA than racial AA.</p>
<p>It’s not a nit. The issue you raised, fairness in the distribution of the resources, is an argument for preferring a combination of racial and socioeconomic factors. Using SES factors alone would, in particular, give a noticeable and undeserved (to use your term) advantage to Asians, since the decisions on how to invest family resources are mostly parental.</p>
<p>If your actual point is that using race is wrong by definition, even if excluding race worsens the rationality of the resource allocation, then the question of who is “deserving” is irrelevant.</p>
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Families that use their available resources on education have a higher quantity of resources (they are wealthier and do not apply under true socioeconomic AA) or they are superhuman and do not need jobs to buy food/shelter/clothing (and they do not apply because they do not exist).</p>
<p>There is no such thing as prioritizing at this particular socioeconomic level because basic needs must come first. And even if it were existent as you suggest, I don’t believe different races should be held to different standards based on varying cultural values. An ORM doesn’t deserve disadvantages because they work harder; that is essentially what your argument dwindles down to.</p>
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<p>Prioritizing is everything at almost every level that “socioeconomic AA” would apply to. It can and does make a huge difference for all things educational. </p>
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<p>The argument was that ORM don’t deserve advantages because their parents worked harder (or differently) than those of a socioeconomically equivalent but culturally different URM. I assume that, as an opponent of racial affirmative action, you don’t want to see children rewarded for having parents of one type rather than another. </p>
<p>The Korean immigrant child who gets to spend his afterschool time on extra learning (and not an unskilled job of the kind the Mexican kid next door is required to hold) is not “working harder”, it is his parents who are smoothing the path to academic success in a way that other race’s parents do not. </p>
<p>A socioeconomic-only system would be statistically equivalent in its effect to giving extra race based benefits to the Korean, even if the algorithm used is race-blind. As you can see in the chart below, there is a specifically racial effect on academic achievement distinct from that of income. The difference between Asians and black SAT averages is about 225 SAT points (from 1600) at all income levels. If as much as a third of that is attributable to racial or cultural factors exogenous to the student (parental decisions, community promoting learning, etc – we allow two thirds to be from the student’s intelligence and effort studying), then equalizing for socioeconomics and ignoring race amounts to a 75-point bonus for Asians compared to blacks. I assume you would be screaming about this if an Espenshade & Chung type study documented that to be the effect, right? i.e, Asians getting extra points in a statistical model of college admissions processes that claim not to treat Asians differently?</p>
<p>[File:1995-SAT-Income2.png</a> - Wikimedia Commons](<a href=“http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1995-SAT-Income2.png]File:1995-SAT-Income2.png”>File:1995-SAT-Income2.png - Wikimedia Commons)</p>
![http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1995-SAT-Income2.png]File:1995-SAT-Income2.png](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1995-SAT-Income2.png%5DFile:1995-SAT-Income2.png){kind=link}
<p>[Harrison</a> Bergeron - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron]Harrison”>Harrison Bergeron - Wikipedia)</p>
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If a family can seriously withhold basic survival needs in order to strive for higher education, they ought to be commended if anything, not disadvantaged. Honestly, though, this is an impossibility. Monetary needs are universal regardless of race.
You’re right. I don’t want to see URMs receive benefits just because as a whole they are exposed to a different set of educational values, often because of their parents. Affirmative action should be meant to help those who are literally unable to acquire access at educational resources, not for those who are discouraged from doing so. If they are discouraged from striving towards achievement at the K-12 level, what makes you think they would suddenly have a change of heart at the college level and beyond?
I do acknowledge that cultural values is most likely the main cause behind the disparity in SAT scores between races. At the same time, I do not consider varying cultural values as being legitimate grounds for affirmative action. This is scarcely a matter of inability but rather choice.</p>
<p>Your personal likes and dislikes for one or another form of preference system are irrelevant to the public discussion, which concerns the preference systems themselves. </p>
<p>The point, which you haven’t answered except by telling us what you do and don’t like in the way of AA methods, was that “socioeconomic AA” just replicates the effect of “racial AA” but with the set of beneficiaries shuffled around (say, more to the taste of Asian college applicants). </p>
<p>It is exactly the same as the Espenshade & Chung analysis of race/athlete/legacy preference in college admissions: the statistical effect of promoting athletics, leadership and holistic factors (resp., “socioeconomic AA”) is to punish (resp., reward) Asians and other race groups compared to others, and this effect is foreseeable when setting the admissions policy. If you’re OK with this for socioeconomic AA then you should have no problem with the racially disparate impact of “holistic admissions” methods.</p>
<p>There is a public policy argument, and many commentators on public policy make it, that “race” is the wrong category to even consider in regard to preferential policies. The international examples of preferential policies are instructive in this regard.</p>
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My “personal likes and dislikes” are formed based on reason. Affirmative action is meant to help those who cannot access educational resources, not those who are discouraged from accessing educational resources. In this sense, poor Asians, poor whites, and poor URMs should receive the same AA boost with small variation (perhaps a location-based boost for those in crime-ridden cities would suffice).
I am fine with URMs being the biggest beneficiaries of AA so long as they aren’t receiving benefits because of their race. I’m OK with the correlation, not with direct causation. Regardless, socioeconomic AA would produce significantly different results from racial AA.</p>
<p>“If they are discouraged from striving towards achievement at the K-12 level, what makes you think they would suddenly have a change of heart at the college level and beyond?”</p>
<p>This isn’t even the type of URM who is accepted by top schools. Once again, stop making it sound like URMs are always accepted. These universities usually consider only the hard-working ones.</p>
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<p>This is just one of the arguments some AA supporters use.</p>
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How did you manage to reach that conclusion?</p>
<p>All I’m suggesting is that if schools reach too far for poor URM applicants specifically rather than create a relatively even playing field for all poor applicants regardless of race, they very well might come up with a lot of these applicants.</p>
<p>I’m speaking theoretically right now. If you haven’t caught up, we’re talking about hypothetical socioeconomic AA situations right now that might involve race, not the current racial affirmative action system.</p>
<p>Chaosakita: How so? How was that post even relatively pertinent to the argument?</p>
<p>Contrary to what some of you believe, it’s true that there are differences among racial groups. My aunt had no childhood because she was too busy taking care of her family. Instead of promoting academic success, my grandparents had to work for low pay, so my aunt started to work when she was four years old. She luckily managed to succeed at both work and academics. </p>
<p>You guys make it sound like URMs are unworthy of attending such prestigious universities, but that’s never the case.</p>
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I feel slightly insulted that you have managed to reach this parochial conclusion in spite of the posts that I’ve been making.
It’s commendable that your aunt was able to achieve success. Nevertheless, do you really expect an ORM in the same economic condition to be able to react to the same situation in a much different manner? Regardless of race, you won’t be able to strive for a higher education without basic needs covered. In this sense and at this socioeconomic level, there is little variation in terms of the differences between URMs and the other applicants, and thus poor URMs should not receive boosts above poor ORMs due to their race (if poor URMs receive additional boosts based on other factors, such as living in an adverse environment, I am fine with it).</p>
<p>Interesting for this thread: </p>
<p>[Statistical</a> Slumps - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com](<a href=“Freakonomics - The hidden side of everything”>Statistical Slumps - Freakonomics)</p>
<p>Asians? We’re minorities too. Oh yeah college admissions are racist</p>
<p>haha I posted a similar thread a couple months ago…it got deleted LOL</p>
<p>Hispanics/African-Americans than Whites/Asians? I swear, I got some college recommendations for my horrible 2.01 GPA and a barely passing average SAT score with some decent to good amount of activities, and researched some of the colleges. One thing that must meet my stands are diversity. I’m asian and i’m not racist or anything but going to a college that’s like more than 30% hispanic or black with a low white population and VERY FEW asians ain’t gonna do it. I like diversity with some rainbow (if you know what I mean) and some of the colleges I’ve researched are DEF. not what I want, although they’re easy to get into. and i’m talking about a lot of colleges in NY</p>
<p>Wow.</p>
<p>“I’m not racist BUT…” <em>IS</em> always followed by a racist statement. </p>
<p>If you can’t deign yourself to be in the classroom with hispanics and blacks, that’s your problem, not any one else’s. You don’t really care about diversity- you just want familiar faces. But look at it this way. The people in those schools? Worked just as hard as you did in school (maybe harder).</p>
<p>A minority in the US population, however if you break down college students ethnically asians are far from a minority.</p>