Want diversity w/o Affirmative Action? Don't rely on the SAT

Parents Forum
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<p>Well, curious, “so many” is not all. And you’re right about one thing: you cannot get into their heads & wouldn’t know if they regretted AA unless they specifically told you that, and told you that they doubted their own self-worth. What’s more likely is that if they drop references to it a few minutes into a conversation, they’re doing so self-consciously not because they themselves doubt their worth, but because they have been constantly told by anti-AA folks that AA compromises someone’s worth. No, actually: it RECOGNIZES someone’s worth, and that is the purpose behind it. But AA admits are often made to feel defensive about it because it is forever being devalued by those who see it as a threat to their own exclusive access to positions of power.</p>

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Two things, one of which is a concern. 1. I don’t see how being poor should give a preference if being black does not. 2. There are far more poor whites and Asians than there are poor blacks. How might we ensure that the poor blacks are not excluded?</p>

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I am old enough to have two kids in college.</p>

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<p>Drosselmeier,</p>

<p>Justice Kennedy may be “just one jurist,” but his opinion in Parents Involved and Meredith is the holding one. He concurred with the opinion of the Court, but he felt that a diverse student body is a legitimate compelling interest. (He qualified the word “diversity” by adding that its meaning and definition matter.) Instead of getting mad, you should thank him for not overturning Grutter.</p>

<p>I remind you that Justice Kennedy was nominated by President Reagan and confirmed by the Senate. I’m sorry that you have no faith in our judiciary.</p>

<p>If you’re unwilling to proclaim that you support Mr. Connerly’s goal of ridding states of both positive and negative discrimination based on race, sex, and ethnicity, then I request reasons as to why. The phrase “affirmative action” isn’t mentioned once in Proposition 209. Adding the restriction, “or grant preferential treatment to,” does not “[worsen] the employment or educational opportunities of members of minority groups or women.” You claim not to support preferential treatment, but you are against amending state constitutions to ban it. This is the recurring paradox among racial preference defenders.</p>

<p>I don’t question that many of the blacks who graduated from Berkeley before 1996 were talented young Americans. I don’t know whether or not they came from poor backgrounds. I do know, however, that after 1996, black admissions dropped at Berkeley but increased elsewhere. I also know that after 1996, black four-year graduation rates increased throughout the entire system. These talented young Americans simply redistributed themselves. As Justice Thomas wrote in Parents Involved, “Racial imbalance is not segregation.”</p>

<p>My “ilk” did not kill any diversity. Today at Berkeley, there are more minorities than whites. Whether you like it or not, Asians are minorities. There are fewer Asians in America than blacks. That your group has a lower representation at Berkeley does not negate our being minorities.</p>

<p>Your dismissal of Berkeley as being “just this school for Asians… and whites” is rude to the black, Hispanic, and Native American students currently enrolled there. Like their fellow students, they worked hard to get there, and I am sure that they would not appreciate your treating them as nonexistent. You criticize Berkeley for not having the “black experience” or “what it means in this day to be a descendant of this history.” As I previously mentioned, the research of Dr. Massey shows that at the elite universities which you consider “example[s] of great American communit[ies] of higher learning,” a rather large number of black students don’t share the “experience” you speak of. So much for Berkeley being unique in this regard.</p>

<p>First, I don’t believe anybody’s entitled to anything other than life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Second, though many of these young black students are more entitled to admission than their development case peers when judged by “strictly quantitative concepts of merit,” given what happened in the UC system after 1996, I doubt this would be sufficient for admission as these students still have to compete against their non-black peers.</p>

<p>You make the comically common mistake of assuming that the complement of race-based admissions is a “numbers driven Chinese system.” That is like saying that at universities, there are either boys or literature majors, which is obviously wrong. Holistic admissions can still be holistic without an explicit consideration of race. See UCLA for an example.</p>

<p>By the way, I take offense to your oversimplification of the “numbers driven Chinese system.” My father has published over twenty papers in peer-reviewed academic journals. His close colleague, who also came from the People’s Republic of China, has published over forty. So much for not being able to “think creatively.”</p>

<p>Who said that “we must kill off all the wonderful black Harvard graduates so that we can focus on black graduates from other schools”? Please reread what I wrote. I stated that “we should focus on increasing the overall number of black graduates,” which by definition includes black alums of Harvard. Unsurprisingly, you’ve created another shoddy straw man. If you’re going to make them, at least make them durable.</p>

<p>I have mistakenly represented my views, though. I indeed should “push to add 10,000 blacks to those 1,000.” After all, I think the overall number counts. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.</p>

<p>If you think flagging an application from a student of a certain race is not preferential treatment, then Mr. Connerly’s initiatives won’t ban it, so I don’t see why you’re so opposed to them.</p>

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<p>One more add to that particular line of thought. Historically, some of the most amazing bits of creativity come out of oppressed people living in strife. Yes, they may be oppressed and unable to express free thought creatively, but when that tiny bit of expressive steam escapes–brother look out.</p>

<p>The power of that creative energy applies to the current Chinese nationals (Ha Jin for example), past Russian nationals (Dosteyevsky) and AFAms (Ellison)–and many, many other repressed cultures, IMO.</p>

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<p>i just want to add a point of illumnation.</p>

<p>UC Riverside, (which Fabrizio seems to trumpet as a bastion of burdgeoning African-American admissions opportunity) has an African-American enrollment of… drum roll…about 6%.</p>

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<p>curious14,</p>

<p>As you point out, there are serious problems involved in legacy preferences. It has the side effect of benefiting people who had opportunities that were denied to others on the basis of race, religion, gender, and so forth. In addition, we are talking about very wealthy universities that have endowments in excess of several billion.</p>

<p>I agree with the points you mention, but I still believe that legacy preferences are acceptable because even though they potentially select for the recipients of prior selective privilege (mostly non-Jewish white males), they can still help students from poorer backgrounds today, help students with housing, help students with a new program, or just add hundreds of thousands of nominal dollars (e.g. $50,000 per year x 4 years = $200,000) to the endowment, which could subsequently be used for many purposes, including the aid of incoming students from poor families.</p>

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<p>According to the College Board, a recent freshman class was 8% black, which translated into 287 black freshmen. By contrast, there were 575 white freshmen, 1,006 Hispanic freshmen, and 1,437 Asian freshmen. There was a great deal of diversity without any racial preference system.</p>

<p>I have not “trumpet[ed] [UC Riverside] as a bastion of burdgeoning [sic] African-American admissions opportunity)." Rather, I have repeatedly stated after 1996, it experienced a massive increase in black admissions, which can only be a good thing.</p>

<p>Edit</p>

<p>I just checked California’s census data, and in 2005, blacks made up 6.1% of the state.</p>

<p>In a demonstration of how perverse the term “over-represented” is, black freshmen were over-represented in a recent entering class at Riverside. Under the holy prescription of proportional representation / racial balance, black freshmen should only be 6.1%.</p>

<p>Of course, I don’t buy into that fake gospel.</p>

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<p>In the amicus brief submitted by **Harvard University, Brown University, the University of
Chicago, Dartmouth College, Duke University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University in support of the university of Michigan, **they state:</p>

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</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/daily/0302/pdfs/amicus_harvard.pdf[/url]”>http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/daily/0302/pdfs/amicus_harvard.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Nice! It does come in handy though, doesn’t it? :)</p>

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<p>sybbie,</p>

<p>The only words I’d excise from that amicus curiae are “and/or culturally.” Everything else is fine to me.</p>

<p>Do you believe that by removing the words “and/or culturally,” the admissions is no longer holistic? I do not believe this is the case, but I frequently read this train of thought from persons on your side of the discussion.</p>

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<p>Since no where in their breif they mention what you would or would not approve of,(and they probably were not writing it with you in mind) I would suggest that take up it up with:</p>

<p>Harvard
Brown<br>
University of Chicago
Dartmouth
Duke University
University of Pennsylvania
Princeton
Yale University</p>

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<p>Fab,</p>

<p>So 287 Blacks are going to UC Riverside (a 240% increase BTW, according to you. I guess there was only 100 going there before Prop 209).</p>

<p>Hardly seems like a significant statistic to base your entire anti-AA argument on. Do you have any other examples of racial diversity taking place on its own without AA?</p>

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<p>fabrizio:</p>

<p>I am impressed. A 18 year old simultaneously locking horns with several people who may be three times your age and winning. With arguments that are neither racist, angry or insulting. I will invite you to my dinner table any time.</p>

<p>And your arguments did bring out true colors of many posters here.</p>

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<p>“A 18 year old simultaneously locking horns with several people who may be three times your age and winning.”</p>

<p>“Winning?” Really? </p>

<p>From a disciplined analytical, rhetorical, debating viewpoint, he is not “winning.” The erroneous manipulation of quotes and the shifts in logical parameters reduce the objective value of any perceived subjective “victories”</p>

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<p>“three times your age”</p>

<p>That’s the one that bothers me! :)</p>

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<p>OK just for you," as old as you". Happy?</p>

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<p>simba,</p>

<p>Thank you!</p>

<p>Since I began discussing this issue with others last fall, I’ve pretty much encountered every argument there is in defense of racial preferences. I eventually realized that the only legitimate ones are actually socioeconomic arguments (e.g. helping the student from the ghetto who is too poor to afford even a used prep book.)</p>

<p>I agree with Mr. Dinesh D’Souza that if affirmative action’s primary goal is social justice, then it should be socially just. As Dr. Massey shows, current policy largely benefits black immigrants, who have little or even no connection to the black experience Drosselmeier refers to. I believe the only way to exclusively aid the Americans who have a direct relation to the black experience is to use gross “positive” discrimination.</p>

<p>To ensure that black immigrants and their children aren’t recipients of preferential treatment, we’d have to resurrect the grandfather clause, for example, by asking “Where were your grandparents born?” To account for forward-thinking immigrants who decide to change their children’s names, we’d have to ask “Have you changed your last name? If so, what was your father’s birth surname?”</p>

<p>As a sidenote, these are the very questions that were asked to reduce the Jewish student body at Harvard in decades past. Applied to today, I believe they are the only way to guarantee that preferential treatment is restricted to the Americans who intimately understand the black experience (i.e. are descendants of slaves).</p>

<p>Otherwise, “diversity” defenders will just have to be content knowing that most of the blacks at the elites come from immigrant households.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/03/07/news/17622.shtml[/url]”>http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/03/07/news/17622.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>“The erroneous manipulation of quotes”</p>

<p>Isn’t that what many are doing?</p>

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<p>Yes, I’m happy. </p>

<p>The thing about Fab is that he never gives up. But don’t confuse his ability to come up with a contorted response with “winning.” LOL</p>

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<p>I am just fast forwarding time…think of how his mind would expand when he is 54.</p>