<p>The Supreme Court will likely issue a ruling in the Kentucky school case which will overturn the use of affirmative action in making public school assignments. There will also be ballots in various states in 2008 seeking to overturn this policy.</p>
<p>Assuming this all comes to pass, what will be the long-term fallout for college admissions. I realize that public and private decisions are a completely different animal. Would private colleges be likely to change their admission policies if the public sector does?</p>
<p>Times are changing. In the privacy of the voting booth, more and more Americans are repudiating the doctrine of “diversity” and its endless synonyms, almost all of which are euphemisms and misnomers.</p>
<p>In Michigan, Proposal 2 lacked support from both major political parties, well-known civil rights organizations, and a plethora of other special interest groups. Polls predicted a failure. It looked like the “diversity” crowd was going to carry the day. Then, the results came. Proposal 2 passed 58/42. Ouch.</p>
<p>I don’t view the states of California, Washington, Florida, and Michigan as outliers. This isn’t a hiccup. It’s a snapshot of the coming future.</p>
<p>Both Ward Connerly, an opponent of racial affirmative action, and Aisha Haynie, a supporter, are working to eliminate the current system. Connerly does so by funding state ballot initiatives that offer citizens the choice of either keeping the status quo or upholding the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement by making sure that preferential treatment is accorded to no one on the basis of race. Haynie does so by favoring a policy that would lead to in-fighting within the affirmative action crowd. She proposes an additional question on applications that would seek to determine whether Blacks are “native-born” or “recent arrivals.”</p>
<p>No movement that seeks to divide persons by skin color has ever lasted.</p>
<p>But, in the end, private universities are free to do whatever they want. If their administrators still think that diversity doublespeak is beneficial, then they’re free to think that.</p>
<p>I have faith in my fellow citizens to do the right thing.</p>
<p>The negative legacy of american history that has made AA even possible/necessary still hasn’t been eradicated. As long as those disparities are here, whether self imposed or a result of past discriminations, there will remain some form of affirmative action. Only to what extent remains to be seen.</p>
<p>While John and Jane Q Public may be leaning towards rescinding or minimizing the impact of AA, politicians and those in academia are more diplomatic and are mindful of the quote of Martin Luther King:</p>
<p>“Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment of the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man is entered at the starting line in a race 300 years after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up with his fellow runner.” </p>
<p>They are mindful of this and as long as they wield any type of power and influence in their circles, they will “play” for lack of a better term, both sides of the fence. Look no further than the amnesty fiasco to see how hesitant politicians on both sides are to alienate significant minority groups.</p>
<p>Several UC schools are now recruiting from target underperforming schools, the idea being that students at those schools face serious disadvantages. I think that, given the unpopularity of affirmative action, more and more colleges will give students advantages in admissions based on what school they came from. The quality of the school is a much better indicator on how disadvantaged a student is than what race he or she is. Colleges can still recruit disadvantaged, underrepresented minorities by giving advantages to students from run-down, inner-city schools, which often have more minorities. This method will be more acceptable by voters because you give some students advantages not on the color of their skin, but how disadvantaged they have been.</p>
<p>“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”</p>
<p>the flagship University of washington as a result of I-200 has been prompted to incorporate “holistic” admissions.
Instead of an admissions index using GPA and test scores, now applications are read by real people!
Reportedly, offers of admission to the UW are the most diverse in recent years. Acceptances to Asian American and Native American students are each up more than 17% and offers to Hispanic student are up 13%.</p>
<p>High school counselors report the holistic process, encourages a wider range of students to apply.</p>
<p>Under the current system practiced by most states and private elites, most of the blacks who are favored are either wealthy or children of immigrants or both. Most are not poor. Many don’t have family members who lived through Jim Crow. Is there really a point to preferentially treat such students?</p>
<p>This question has made many an American voter uncomfortable, so uncomfortable, in fact, that majorities have voted to change the status quo. The policy should help the disadvantaged, not the son of a well-paid black lawyer.</p>
<p>Oddly, the “diversity” crowd doesn’t seem to be big on compromise. They don’t care much for socioeconomic affirmative action as a replacement for race-based affirmative action. They have difficulty accepting the idea that not including race does not mean “numbers only.” As UC demonstrates, you can still be holistic in the process without resorting to race.</p>
<p>Unlike Fabrizio, I do not find “diversity” a dirty word. </p>
<p>It’s our strength, not our weakness, and anything that makes our social engines less diverse is just shooting ourselves in the foot.</p>
<p>One of the main legacies of the current flavor of conservatism is a paranoid, we-versus-them mentality our country. It never has been a good thing, and it won’t be a good thing going forward.</p>
<p>Perhaps once we are offering all kids the same K-12 education, then we can consider eliminating AA.</p>
<p>Diversity itself isn’t a dirty word at all. Its current use by its namesake advocates, though, destroys the meaning.</p>
<p>The word has become a synonym for “proportional representation,” itself a euphemism for quotas, which are unfortunately illegal in name only.</p>
<p>It’s not uncommon to hear “We’re looking for a diverse candidate.” What does that mean? Each candidate is unique by definition. You will always get a diverse person because you will always get a different person.</p>
<p>Real diversity can be obtained without resorting to racial preferences. Berkeley, for example, has more minorities than whites. The supposed “over-representation” of Asians in academe does not negate their status as minorities in the United States.</p>
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<p>Based on the experience of California after 1996, it looks like the elimination of affirmative action can aid the spread of good K-12 educational opportunities to disadvantaged districts.</p>
<p>The mere notion of looking for “diversity” is not looking at it as race neutal. I agree with Fabrizo that this mind-set is counterproductive now. If we thought a true meritocracy existed very few would question the makeup of groups. They could be 98% white or 50% black without raising an eyebrow.</p>
<p>But you’re assuming minorities get worse education simply because they’re minorities, even if they go to the same school, live in the same city, and make the same amount of money as the majority race. If colleges give advantages to students from low-quality schools, this is much fairer because students from low-quality schools receive a worse education by definition. A student that goes to one of such schools is disadvantaged whether he/she is white, black, Hispanic, Asian, or any other race/ethnicity. Students who go to different types of schools would also be more likely to have different backgrounds and beliefs, even if they are the same race, as students of different races that go to the same type of school. Having different backgrounds and beliefs and learning from each other constitute the educational benefit of diversity.</p>
<p>For anyone who thinks that so-called “holistic” admissions at a large state university is anything but a dodge to continue to engage in AA, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell them. The University of Washington is engaging in a thinly-discguised form of what in the 1950s was described as massive resistance.</p>
<p>As a supporter of AA, I think that one of the most regrettable aspects of anti-AA initiatives and judicial decisions is that it encourages this type of intellectual dishonesty from academic institutions who are deliberately evading the law.</p>
<p>For anyone who thinks that so-called “holistic” admissions at a large state university is anything but a dodge to continue to engage in AA, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell them. The University of Washington is engaging in a thinly-discguised form of what in the 1950s was described as massive resistance.</p>
<p>As a supporter of AA, I think that one of the most regrettable aspects of anti-AA initiatives and judicial decisions is that it encourages this type of intellectual dishonesty from academic institutions who are deliberately evading the law.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, it is not as simple as allowing for economic indicators.</p>
<p>My experience in a “alternative” school in a “liberal” city, showed me that adults bring their preconceptions to the classroom, which can detrimentially affect student opportunties.
For example- I observed minority students- ( many but not all from middle class backgrounds) being steered into less challenging classes or otherwise held to lower standards than was expected of Caucasian students.</p>
<p>These kids are not dumb, but unless their parents were aware of everything that went on in the classroom, and few are- white or black-they didn’t realize they had to push for accountabilty.</p>
<p>I would agree that first gen/economic status should be attended to in the application process, but there is still a need to recognize that minority students, even compared to non minority students in their school, have a disadvantage.
And that is just education related, not allowing for societal pressures and obstacles.</p>
<p>The biggest failure of Affirmative Action is that it is STILL so desperately needed in the United States. And, for the record, Affirmative Action goes well beyond college admissions. More than three decades after the civil rights movement, the fact that minorities and women still need to be given special consideration in employment, education and contracting decisions speaks volume about our collective desire to see a playing field that is truly level.</p>
<p>“The biggest failure of Affirmative Action is that it is STILL so desperately needed in the United States.”</p>
<p>I would think our failure is not in AA per se but a failure to go beyond AA to promote a more equalitarian system. We need better enforcement of non-disrimination laws as well as better recognition of special needs. For example, what is the use of promoting woman to enter science if we do not have better maternal leaves for women who also wish to have children?</p>
<p>I believe that as nation, we would like to see a real level playing field. I also believe that as a nation, we’re tired of how affirmative action doesn’t do much to make that idea a reality.</p>
<p>Over a decade ago, California’s voters passed Proposition 209 55/45. Only two years later, Washington’s voters passed Initiative 200 59/41. Last year, Michigan’s voters passed Proposal 2 58/42. Notice how there was no 51/49 result.</p>
<p>It should be noted that the Democratic Party, which has historically been more supportive of racial preferences than the Republican Party, won all three of these states in the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Presidential Elections.</p>
<p>If three blue states voted to make sure that people cannot be granted preferential treatment on the basis of their race, what do you think will happen next year in Arizona, Missouri, Colorado, and Oklahoma? In the last two Presidential Elections, the Republican Party won all four of these states (i.e. they are red).</p>
<p>Americans are tired of listening to platitudes about why it’s good to look at a man’s skin color. They are effecting change, one state at a time.</p>