Socioeconomic Affirmative Action

College Confidential Community
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<p>I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I’ve come to realize that one’s support of said hinges on one’s fundamental view of society. I’ll present two examples:</p>

<li>There are two students, Student A and Student B. Student A and Student B possess the same intelligence. Student B, however, is more wealthy than Student A and lives in a wealthier neighborhood with better schools. Correspondingly, Student B has access to more opportunities, including ones provided by private counselors, research, sports, e.t.c. Additionally, Student A must work to support his/her family, and as such, does not have the same amount of time to devote to his/her passions. They have the same test scores.</li>
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<p>In this example, I’d say that affirmative action for Student A is clearly warranted. Consider, however, the next example:</p>

<li>There are two students, Student C and Student D. Student D is born with more neural connections and is naturally more intelligent than is Student C. Student D is also more wealthy than Student C and lives in a wealthier neighborhood with better schools. All of the same conditions in example 1 apply. Student D scores better than does Student C.</li>
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<p>Let’s assume that intelligence is not affected by shared environmental factors (things like books in the home, vocabulary of parents, e.t.c.). Should Student C receive affirmative action?</p>

<p>I suppose the question comes down to this: </p>

<p>Assuming that the percentage of intelligence which is determined by shared environmental factors is positively discovered, do you believe that affirmative action should be given at a weight corresponding to that percentage? Furthermore, do you then believe that people who are genetically less intelligent because of their birth parents should be given affirmative action (after all, people cannot select their parents), or do you believe that since genetics are taken into account for everything, we should draw the line (i.e., if you answered in the affirmative to that question, you would also support income redistribution, e.t.c.). There is a practical matter to be taken into account here as well; perhaps people of lower intelligence simply can’t handle the work. How far should affirmative action for intelligences then go? Elite colleges would have to accept people with IQs of 32 if you agree with the above logic; these people, by being around those of intelligence, increasing their societal standing, and eventually marrying someone of higher intelligence, would produce more intelligent offspring, and society as a whole would become more “equal.”</p>

<p>This has a lot to with [url=<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rawls]Rawlsian[/url”>John Rawls - Wikipedia]Rawlsian[/url</a>] philosophy. I’m not making value judgments here (not that anything’s wrong with that ;)), I’m attempting to spark a conversation about an extremely important topic which seems to go unnoticed.</p>

<p>NOTE WELL: THIS THREAD HAS (AND SHOULD HAVE) ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH RACE.</p>

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<p>“topic which seems to go unnoticed.”</p>

<p>???</p>

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<p>Do you believe in equal rights alone or both equal rights and equal outcomes? If you believe in affirmative action and thus the latter, then you must support eventual income redistribution. I don’t see how such an opinion would be feasible any other way.</p>

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<p>I say:</p>

<p>Survival of the fittest. </p>

<p>Do not expect any aid because of your circumstances. Nor should you believe that because you were the best within your own group colleges have to care. If such an opportunity comes, take it. Else… the world is a cruel place. Sorry.</p>

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<p>God, I could get into this topic for hours because I have a lot of things to say, but I’ll try and stay away. Suffice to say the “they score equally” presumption in your reasoning is flawed, for one. It’s not only that white people score higher on SAT:s than black and hispanic people; parental income DIRECTLY corresponds to the score brackets (i.e, every $10,000 or so gives you ten points extra or so. Can’t remember the exact statistic, but it’s readily available if you do a simple google search).</p>

<p>Survival of the fittest? More like, survival of those the system has set up to survive under its own premises. Affirmative actions is one measly step to combat this, but I’d rather see changes take place on the structural level - how do we create schools and societies that WON’T marginalize lower socioeconomic classes away from positions of power?</p>

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<p>I was not arguing on behalf of anything in my original post, I was posing a question. The quote you bring up was contained within a hypothetical anecdote.</p>

<p>Additionally, and I can’t emphasize this enough, please keep race out of this. We have far too many arguments about racial affirmative action.</p>

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<p>Race and wealth can’t be separated.</p>

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<p>Education is a powerful way by which economic and social disparities can be impacted. </p>

<p>I think it is reasonable for institutions to set their own policies regarding access, and I think policy-makers do have the right to encourage or mandate equal access for all.</p>

<p>However, I do not think that policy-makers should manipulate access so that those with lesser qualifications are favored. Government should be about equal access, not unequal access in one direction or another.</p>

<p>Private institutions can do as they please IF they do not accept public money. If they accept public money, they should be accountable to the same standard - equal access for all.</p>

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<p>this topic has been done over and over and over and over…people already know what other ppl think of it!</p>