<p>
</p>
<p>Some are, though I believe the great majority came afterwards, and many came only after the 1960s.</p>
<p>I agree, that the US as a country must face the legacy of salvery, and I support AA. It is just when people argue that Asians have it easy that I object.</p>
<p>cbreeze: I don’t know how to prove a negative. I know WE as a family value diversity and make our choices accordingly. I don’t see why we cannot accord members of adcoms the same trust. Admission committees are made up of people who move around a lot (many are recent graduates who stay for only a couple of years). If they had stories of deliberate discrimination, I’m pretty confident that they would have a best-seller out already.</p>
<p>Fred Hagardon was suspected of favoring suburban athletes as a way of discriminating against Jews. That’s why, it was said, that he did little recruiting at Stuyvesant, a school with a high percentage of both Jews and Asians… It was not proven (could it be? ) At any rate, he retired in 2003, a few years before Mr. Li applied to Princeton. Since then, Princeton has actively recruited at Stuy.</p>
<p>I certainly don’t think Asians had it ‘easy’, I believe the US has a history of using anyone in reach in the cheapest way possible to achieve its goals, blacks, Irish, asians, etc. But no other culture save native americans endured such systematic attempts at decimation of culture and identity as africans did. </p>
<p>AA irritates me, I would prefer it never existed. I would prefer that when the government took ‘responsibility’ for its actions against one of the largest contributors to its society it had really attempted to redress the problem. Instead they unleashed uneducated slaves to be taken advantage of, again. They underfunded ‘separate but equal’ schools for decades, and when forced to own up to that, shoved these kids in with their very much unequals. And when there was uproar about that they slapped the AA bandage on the problem and called it a day. AA does need to go, but it can’t go until the day everyone owns up that there will have to be some serious effort, and money devoted into cleaning up this mess. And that means EVERYONE who stays in this country has to help pay that price, whether their ancestors cracked a whip or not.</p>
<p>
Well, I certainly am not claiming the Asians have it “easy”. I have many friends who are Asians and know their struggles. My son’s girlfriend is Chinese and through her I have gotten to know even more closely what many Asians are up against here. Still, few real comparisons of the Asian experience to the black experience can be made simply because the core identity that defines black American culture differs radically from that which defines Chinese American culture. It is that identity that we are all having to deal with now. It would be one thing had Chinese American culture today come from kidnapped ancestors and a people who have no idea that it comes from China. It would be one thing had millions of these people no idea about the sort of poetry their ancestors wrote, what acts of heroism they performed, what philosophies, music, and games they developed. That simply isn’t the case with the Chinese, despite their tough history-- and it is a good thing it isn’t the case because no people should endure such ignorance about its very self. This sort of forced and near hopeless ignorance is one of the few things that defines blacks as a people. And it is causing all sorts of problems. Stuff yall don’t even think about is hammering at us every minute of each and every day. There is a reason why that OJ jury did what it did, and why huge majorities of blacks agreed with it while huge majorities of whites did not (I disagreed with it, btw). Blacks can’t stand OJ, but this just didn’t matter because vast majorities of them distrust the system, feeling somehow victimized by it due largely to their experience-- which resulted of the sort of attitudes that caused Jim Crow, which came out of slavery.</p>
<p>Yeah. I agree with red_dragone, including the wish that AA had never existed in the first place. But now that we have it, I think the last thing we should do is just end it in a huff. This will be disastrous over the long term, and no one is gonna be insulated from the fallout.</p>
<p>If the argument used in finding bias against Asians in college admissions is Asians have had as much prejudice against them and as many bad times as African Americans in this country then I am 100% against Li and anybody else on his side.</p>
<p>There is no way the Asian experience compares to the African American experience in this country.</p>
<p>It’s African Americans and the American Indians, and then Mexican Americans that have been the most oppressed and discriminated against in this country.</p>
<p>Drosselmeier, I feel bad if you are feeling it necessary to argue this.</p>
<p>It really angers me.</p>
<p>“Yeah. I agree with red_dragone, including the wish that AA had never existed in the first place. But now that we have it, I think the last thing we should do is just end it in a huff. This will be disastrous over the long term, and no one is gonna be insulated from the fallout.”</p>
<p>Should we end AA because the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction? Has the AA REALLY created many cases of reverse discrimination?<br>
In so many words, has AA made THAT much difference since it started? How many non-minority students are really displaced by this abomination of a law? With all the hoopla, it MUST be a whole lot … for sure! </p>
<p>Maybe we should evaluate AA a bit farther than the context of the Li case. Why do we still need AA for women owned businesses? How many schools are in compliance with Title IX? To the untrained eye, doesn’t it seem that women get a ton of advantages, especially in athletic scholarships? Why do women need a boost when applying to MIT or other leading engineering schools? They do not seem to need it as their grades are supposed to be higher than men in high schools. Don’t we have too many engineers anyway? </p>
<p>Oh well, the truth is always different when scratching the surface:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.now.org/issues/affirm/talking.html[/url]”>http://www.now.org/issues/affirm/talking.html</a></p>
<p>Xiggi, nice link.</p>
<p>From the interesting link that Xiggi posted:</p>
<p>"Myth: Affirmative Action is “reverse discrimination” — let’s stop giving special rights to certain groups while others are left out. </p>
<p>Fact: Affirmative Action is fair! </p>
<p>Affirmative Action levels the playing field so people of color and all women have the chance to compete in education and in business. White men hold 95% to 97% of the high-level corporate jobs. And that’s with affirmative action programs in place. Imagine how low figures would be without affirmative action. Of 3000 federal court decisions in discrimination cases between 1990 and 1994, only 100 involved claims of reverse discrimination; only 6 of those claims were found to be valid. …</p>
<p>Myth: My son can’t get into a good school because of affirmative action. </p>
<p>Fact: If half of the people of color who are admitted to schools under affirmative action programs were cut, the acceptance rates of white men would only increase by 2%. </p>
<p>Women still face barriers in schools. In Washington, women receive only 12% of doctorates in engineering, and women are substantially under-represented in computer science nationwide. </p>
<p>Myth: Nobody else gets special consideration when applying to a college or for a job. Why should all women and people of color? </p>
<p>Fact: Lots of people get “special” consideration when applying for jobs or to schools. </p>
<p>Veterans often get preferences in workplaces and on campuses — which usually benefit men more than women. The children of alumni get preferential treatment over others in admission to college. Friends help friends and acquaintances get jobs. Affirmative Action helps open doors for women and people of color who often don’t have those connections…"</p>
<p>I wholeheartedly agree with Drosselmeirer. No other racial minority in America has experienced the same level of sustained systematic soul-destruction that African Americans have experienced—and that’s saying a LOT, given the baldfaced atrocities some other races have also face in this country! </p>
<p>A few weeks ago, I related in another thread on the forum, that it greived me greatly to discover that I had no way of tracing my family tree back more than about 4 generations, unlike my German American husband, whose documented family tree goes all the way back to the late 1600s. </p>
<p>The widespread practice of disregarding familiar ties, and selling off individual slaves at whim, along with slaveowners’ tendency to keep extremely poor records when it came to identifying slave names and origins, serves to thwart any attempt at extensive geneological research for most African Americans. I cannot explain to you how much I resent the fact that I have no “legitimate” name, one which reflects my true heritage, my African heritage. Slaves were routinely named, Sally, or Buck, or Toby, having been denied access to any knowledge of traditional tribal names. Usually, they were not even given sirnames, and when they were, they were almost always the name of their masters. They were stripped of their native language, and greatly discouraged from speaking proper english. I envied the African students whom I met in college. They KNEW who they were! They had a culture all their own. They had a language all their own. They had a NAME! I wanted that. Out of whole cloth, for over three hundred years, Black Americans have been trying to carve out a basic human birthright, something that every other race in America has been able to blithly take for granted. </p>
<p>To meet me, you’d never guess that I carry such a fundamental ache inside, such a feeling of deficit that is always just under the surface. But I assure you it is there, and it’s not just something I can “get over”. I cope with it. I push it down as far as possible most of the time, distract myself with other thoughts, and the minutea of the day to day. But, the whole subject of AA brings it boiling to the surface. </p>
<p>If you are offended by this, well, I can’t help you. If you think I’m “playing the race card”, well then just think what you want. But don’t tell me that AA is an egregious injustice. If you think that, you have no idea what an egregious injustice is. Egregious injustice is more than two hundred years of the most dehumanizing form of slavery ever devised, and 100 years of Jim Crow, with most Americans feeling JUST FINE about it. Egregious is constrasting this fact with the disproportionate outrage many now express because a relative few black kids have had their race factored into their college admissions. Egregious is the way The Civil Rights Act, and a few words of Dr. Martin Luther King, are being used to bludgeon black people into submission with the supercilious claim of “reverse discrimination”. You don’t know from discrimination! I’ll tell you what—let’s trade places. Let’s talk afterward. </p>
<p>I’ll probably regret this later, but I’m hitting “send”. Warm up you flame-throwers. I don’t give a *&%@!</p>
<p>Wow, poetsheart, thanks for adding a more personal view of discrimination.</p>
<p>The problem with AA is not that it takes spots away from whites (or whatever) but that it doesn’t - it can’t - do enough. I’m appalled to think that Americans - of whatever ethnicity - think that it’s not in ALL our best interests to support education and job training for African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans. Don’t we <em>want</em> a more broadly education society as a whole? Don’t we <em>want</em> to continue the legacy of equal opportunity? Are we so selfish as individuals that we are blind to the needs of the country as a whole? We don’t live in separate countries; we belong to the same one, and to elevate the opportunities for disadvantaged groups makes us stronger. The sad thing is, for a majority of blacks, NAs, and Hispanics, they don’t have a chance for top colleges from the day they are born. Those who overcome the cultural, economic, and psychological disadvantages to be competitive at colleges deserve that extra boost; they have the ambition and resolve that elite colleges love. While some Asians may have overcome hardships (as have some whites), they belong to a culture that makes it easier to do well in school. These other groups do not. The only way to change this is to increase the number of successful college grads who will then teach their children to value educational excellence. Is this enough? Of course not. There are deeper psychological issues that must be overcome by society as a whole. AA can change only a small part of inequity. </p>
<p>I’m not saying that discrimination does not occur because it does. Does it occur against Asians at Princeton? We’ll see when the investigation concludes. However, the fact that one anti-discrimination complaint has turned to the topic of whether URMs should be given an AA boost is telling. </p>
<p>The argument keeps returning to the idea that Asians as a whole “need” SAT scores some points higher than whites, and whites “need” SAT scores some points higher than blacks and Hispanics. So what? The SAT has been shown to favor while males, although ETS can’t figure out how to equalize it. Even the CR section favors math/logic thinkers over metaphorical/creative thinkers. That’s why top colleges tend to ignore the actual scores once some unstated minimum is met. This policy has been in effect for decades, long before Asians became an educational force in this country, and has served to diversify elite colleges not just racially, but also academically. </p>
<p>Yes, it would be wonderful to have a race blind society, but the fact is, we don’t, and so we must address the weaknesses in whatever way we can.</p>
<p>
Nothing to flame, poetsheart.
I can only imagine. I just visited my grandparents home town in Ireland this summer. Unlike you, it was always a real place in my mind. (Think John Wayne in The Quiet Man with his mom’s tales of her homeland playing in his head.) When I see how the Irish love to identify their heritage right down to a tiny village with a few cottages & cows, and then realize that American blacks can only guess that their ancestors came from somewhere on the huge continent of Africa, I can only sympathize.</p>
<p>Have you looked into all the DNA-based African origin projects I’ve read about?</p>
<p>It’s great to read all these posts. As I’ve stated many times, I favor AA. I wish that k-12 education could be improved, especially in inner cities, but one important way of raising achievement among African-Americans is by providing role models. NPR just ran a piece this morning about the difficulties of attracting good teachers to underperforming schools. </p>
<p>So, to recap: I think Jian Li’s complaint is wrong-headed. He has the right to make it. I doubt he could prove his case.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4196/is_20030815/ai_n10904714[/url]”>http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4196/is_20030815/ai_n10904714</a></p>
<p>Here’s a link to Leonard Pitts and his experiences tracing his roots. I remember him being featured in The Star Ledger (NJ) with a multi-part series. Unfortunately, their search capabiliteis on the website really stink.</p>
<p>marite did you read the first link in EGoldstein’s post? - it is a nice 50 page summary of what is wrong with the race based AA.</p>
<p>Simba:</p>
<p>No I didn’t. There are problems with the way AA is applied. We all know that. But AA is better than nothing as a tool of redressing past wrongs and paving way for the future. Colleges cannot address all the ills that affect society, including poor k-12 education, but they can and should make an effort to address those that they can.</p>
<p>When I was in college, my own started a one-year Upward Bound program for minorities, that was designed to better prepare them for college. Not all who went through it made it into the college, but many did. Their children are now college age. The growth of the African-American middle-class can be traced to students like those who went through Upward Bound and similar programs. I think it’s a good thing. Like interesteddad, I deplore efforts to shut them down.</p>
<p>Simba, AA isn’t perfect. </p>
<p>You really, really need to do a rethink.</p>
<p>Actually, Marite, though I agree with you completely, Upward Bound is a federally financed program which does not take race into account when admitting students. Colleges sponsor the program, and are grant funded to administer it. (I know this because I work for Student Support Services, which is a related support program for students who are already undergraduates in college.) Your school might have had an UB-like program, but UB and SSS have never been race-based.</p>
<p>Garland:</p>
<p>This was back in the 60s, and it was definitely aimed at minorities.</p>
<p>Mostly minority representation may likely be the outcome (it is at my institution) but all TRIO programs (of which UB is one) have always defined their qualifications as low income and/or first gen college student (first gen defined as neither parent has a four year degree, low income whatever the dept of Ed has set it at per family size.) This has been in the regulations from the start.</p>