<p>I mean I see so many people say, “Hey he got in because he was a URM”. Your “URM status makes you have a great shot”</p>
<p>If I was black or hispanic, I would be really mad at those comments because they are basically saying that the only reason you are successful is because of your race.</p>
<p>So basically, people say that they can’t succeed if they were Asian or something. How would you feel if all your coworkers were like this to you, saying “oh he only got the job because of his race; he’s not really qualfieid anyways”</p>
<p>And you know what: There are african americans and hispanics out there that are qualfieid NO MATTER WHAT RACE THEY ARE…condalezza rice anyone? barrack obama anyone? clarence thomas anyone? Yet, with affirmative action, it basically takes away from their great achievements.</p>
<p>If I were black or hispanic, I would be so ticked off at affirmative action because the people that support affirmative action are basically saying “you are inferior, that is why we need affirmative action to put you on the same playing field as anyone else” If anyone said that to me, I would be soooooo mad.</p>
<p>So at the end, affirmative action benefits NO ONE. </p>
<p>And consider this: If you were in a burning building and you were trapped inside and dying, would you want a firefighter who got his job because of merit or a firefighter who got his job because of affirmative action?</p>
<p>also, i know people that take advantage of it all the time: I know a person that had a last name of Lee and purposely did not put he was Asian because it can be a white/black last name. Guess what, it might have slightly helped him, and basically, he TOOK ADVANTAGE of affirmative action for all the wrong reasons! Isnt that NOT the point?</p>
<p>Saying you are a good candidate because you are a URM isn’t saying you aren’t a good candidate for other reasons…it’s a hook, like any other hook, like location or legacy status.
Colleges aren’t stupid. People need to stop worrying that some black kid is gonna take the spot that is “rightfully theirs” (yea…about that lol…) and start actually getting an education at whatever school they get into…</p>
<p>The dirt low expectations that URM’s are held to (i’ve literally had teachers, especially in elementary school assume I knew nothing. Like, 'you can read?? And at a high level? Are you cheating or something?!! I’ve got my eye on you…and this is in the MIDWEST) + the high likelyhood of economic disadvantage means colleges need to take race into account, at least for diversity and fairnesses sake.</p>
<p>An african american in my physics class got into Duke and UChicago this year, and when he said I got in, and everyone was like “oh he only got in because of AA” EVEN THOUGH THERE WERE OTHER GOOD FACTORS ABOUT HIM.</p>
<p>So I don’t see why people that are benefited from affirmative action not mad about it. That’s even worse comment to make then saying I got rejected just because I was Asian…saying you were accepted just because you were black.</p>
<p>I had a number of interesting conversations with an old African American physician. He had gone to medical school and finished his training long before affirmative action came along. He then joined a medical school faculty, and became a full professor. He was highly accomplished in his field, and well recognized by other doctors in that field. </p>
<p>Although he had lived with the following attitude all his life, it continued to infuriate him. It was this: if he went anywhere, even to a medical convention, people would take one look at him and assume he did not belong there, or that if he did, it was not because he was a physician. So at a dinner for a medical society they assumed he was a waiter. At the convention itself, they assumed he must be the guy assigned to take tickets at the door. NO ONE (or to be more precise, no white people) would simply assume what they assumed of all the white men (remember he was old, and when he came along the vast majority of doctors were men)- that they were there because they were physicians.</p>
<p>So before affirmative action it was hardly as if the rest of the world assumed that a black physician got there on merit. They simply refused to believe it at all. Now racists have a different label for their attitudes, but the underlying rationale is the same “There is no such thing as a qualified black doctor (those black doctors who exist got there due to affirmative action)”. These types like to pretend that they harbored no biases against the docs who came along before AA. If that is true, then what was this black doctor complaining about?</p>
<p>I’d like to be rescued by Reed Diamond when he was playing the role of Mike Kellerman on the series Homicide. Although since he is an actor playing a fire fighter I’d really be in trouble.</p>
<p>I completely agree with everything you said, and my post isn’t meant to contradict any of it, but merely to put it into perspective. The population that frequents CC is by no means representative of the rest of the population, and this stands for URMs as well. Though the URMs who go on CC have absolutely outstanding stats, ones that often rival those of non-URMs, the fact of the matter is that most other URMs aren’t nearly so well off. This is the target population of affirmative action. There are people who only stand a chance in the admissions process because they are from typically disadvantaged backgrounds, and affirmative action was created for the purpose of promoting equality of chance. While most students on CC would get into a number of wonderful colleges regardless of their minority status (or lack thereof), much of the national URM population wouldn’t. As harsh as it may seem, there are people who get into good colleges just because they are URMs.</p>
<p>People need to get over affirmative action. Until the playing field is leveled it’s probably going to be there. How’s a disadvantaged black kid who goes to an impoverished school supposed to compete with a kid from New England who goes to a wealthy private school where people can afford SAT Prep classes that cost an upward of over $1,000. Is that fair, no. Is it fair that legacies, athletes, and alumni who donate large sums of money get advantages in the admissions process, no. </p>
<p>I think the issue has a lot more to do with race than most people will care to admit. I’ve never seen someone say that oh “He/She only got in because they are a legacy” or “He/She only got in because they can throw a football”, but if it’s a minority people will easily say that “He/She only got in because he/she is a minority” and just as Afan noted, even before AA came along successful African-Americans we’re looked down upon, and now that there is AA we just label it as such.</p>
<p>Until the playing field is leveled, I don’t see Affirmative Action being abolished anytime soon.</p>
<p>Affirmative Action doesn’t discredit any minorities achievements. People who are against Affirmative Action or who believe that some students get in solely because of Affirmative Action attempt to discredit minority achievements. Actually, most majority groups, throughout history, are known for discrediting the achievements of minorities.</p>
<p>What’s melanin have anything to do with the playing field? The way I see it, I’m 100% for leveling the playing field if its uneven to begin with. Socioeconomic maybe? There are tons of poor asians who don’t get any of these benefits and tons of rich blacks who do simply because they happened to have more skin pigmentation. When Obama was interviewed about AA and his daughters, he distinctly said that he thinks that they are privileged and should not receive the same benefits. If we can have a black man in office, don’t you think it’s about time to reconsider this black/poor vs. white/rich dichotomy and implement a program that realistically portrays the individual as a member of society and not a member of a race?</p>
<p>To the OP: There are many URMs who are in fact highly offened by AA. I attend an Ivy League institution and I definitely feel that they in a way resent what AA is doing to the face of minority students. There are also many great debaters that are considered URM fighting against AA as we speak.</p>
<p>when you think of denial of institutional opportunities, those who have received the brunt end of it have been blacks in this country. it is incredibly narrow-minded to think that colleges are judging skin as an individual factor to boost an applicant. the fact is, that institutional biases have contributed to the socio-economic state of most black people in this country, hence why affirmative action tends to level out the field. do you really think affirmative action is meant to benefit a rich black kid who already receives opportunities, or a poor black kid who is simply a product of the system. anyone neglecting that correlation between race and socioeconomic standing, and the fact that those two are considered in CONJUCTION in the college admission process is simply ignorant.</p>
<p>i hate to generalize, but whenever i see arguments against AA, it’s usually by upper-middle class people who lack the sense of perspective of what it means to grow up as a person of color in this country – the stigma around educational opportunities, the ability to obtain these resources, etc. the fact of the matter is, for most people of color, socioeconomic factors do come into play in terms of getting an education decent enough to compete with others applying.</p>
<p>i look on this site, and i see kids with the mindset as if their parents will be killed if they don’t score high enough on the SAT. i look at the acceptance threads on these boards and the income brackets are usually 100k+. i see kids on this board spending nearly every waking moment trying to polish their academic record and resume. and these are the same people trying to criticize AA? it really is hilarious, and a classic example of the upper-class views the world from this sheltered bubble. no one in my predominantly latino high school could do what i see students on CC doing. not because they weren’t capable, but given that most of them were poor, they didn’t have the time to just indulge in academics like a lot of you do. i got into a top college, but i had to put a tremendous effort out the classrooms that weren’t teaching us ****. case in point, to understand AA is to understand the plight of the poor person of color in this country (a perspective few of you probably have here), and how those factors are viewed together by college admissions staff COMPETENT enough to see how it works against certain students.</p>
I’d say it really doesn’t matter if you view it in conjunction when the actual thing you’re observing is ridiculous when observed independently. For example, would you recommend that colleges look at what size shoe you wear to determine if you’ll contribute “diversity” to the school? If you say yes to this, I don’t even think this is worth discussing with you. But I’ll assume you’ll say that’s ridiculous. I think it’s analogous, if not exactly the same, when you examine an applicant based on race EVEN in conjunction with other factors. I never claimed they don’t take other factors into account, but the mere fact that it’s there is an insult to me, personally (everyone should be insulted I think, but apparently not). The only way your argument makes sense is if we assign an attribute to a race such as being poor or disadvantaged. You even did that in your post may I add. You’re judging someone based on their race. What’s that called? And you’re calling me ignorant why? Is it because I don’t agree with your point of view and I logically laid out my reasoning for what I believe in? Way to go.</p>
<p>
First of all, I was arguing from a philosophical basis, but now you want to make it personal. Fine. I’m Asian myself, but I grew up in a really bad neighborhood. In fact, we were robbed several times at gunpoint, almost died a couple times, and we barely made it out of the poverty line. But guess what? I don’t receive any benefits based on my skin color. My parents made sacrifices to put me through school and I respect them highly for that. Don’t dichotomize the world into upper-class and lower-class because people are a lot more complex than you think.</p>
<p>You claim you wouldn’t see many people from your school come on CC. Then what are you doing here? The fact of the matter is, you don’t have to undergo “the plight of the poor person” to know what is justice and what is injustice just as you don’t need to be a murderer to understand his mentality. Again, you assign poor to minority, which is highly offensive to me.</p>
<p>Also, don’t you dare try to make the argument that I in fact received admissions to my college based on these hard times. I distinctly didn’t write about any of it so I could prove to myself that I did it through merit.</p>
<p>Yea, those types of statements are very annoying. But I think this conversation I heard between a Hispanic and an Asian however many years ago sums things up pretty well:</p>
<p>(Hispanic got into Harvard, Asian was rejected)</p>
<p>People congratulate Hispanic on being accepted to Harvard.
Asian and others: “You only got in because you’re Hispanic.”
Hispanic: “Oh, I’m sure.”
Asian: “I have a higher SAT and GPA and better extracurriculars than you. I write better than you too.”
Hispanic: “Oh well, I’m going to Harvard. Have fun going to whatever school you’re going to that isn’t named Harvard.” </p>