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AA. The One With the College Admissions, Not the One With the Booze.
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Note the bolded portion.
And seriously, Asian people in the medical industry? That's about as bad as noting black guys in basketball.
Well great, if you get the "feeling," then all is well.
I think it helps with the majority obligation to fix the situation, in that it works to prevent institutionalized racism. There's also a burden on the minority group to take advantage of those opportunities, and I think that isn't happening the degree it needs to (again, based off of Barkley's book). Only by not allowing institutions to be covertly racist, and through having a wealth of positive examples coming through the system, can institutionalized racism be beaten back.
Personally, I'm slightly anti-AA, in that I don't think it is very useful any more and could potentially sow discontent amongst the majority population instead. I don't think we should get rid of it, though, until someone has a better plan. Such as free ice cream Thrusdays.
Yeah, I've always seen Barkley as a bit of a ladder-puller, but there's probably some merit to his view. I guess I see one of the the longer-term effects of AA as creating positive examples that don't involve people winning the professional-athlete lottery. The military is actually a pretty decent instrument for this as well.
I mean we see all these commercials of white and black and hispanic people all partying together and sharing iPods and Zimas or whatever, but honestly you don't see that all that often outside of the military, where it was on display at every single enlisted bar I've ever been to.
Wow. So who is tossing out the stereotypes now?
Is your position that asians should be the recipient of affirmative action as well?
btw- I haven't been in school for 8 years, and I still know many of the students in question, so you could say that these individuals have "real world experience" and are well over your dividing line of 30 years old. (34 myself)
Let's use some actual numbers, then. In a class of 50, do you think that I, a privileged white dude, am going to benefit measurably more by having 3 black guys in my class than by having 2? In both cases, there are hardly any black guys there, yet there are enough that if I'm looking around, I can say, "Yup, black dudes." Keep in mind that my comment was specifically focusing on the benefit to non-minorities from having "diversity".
We know that admissions went up by a factor of 13, sure. But your assertion that this is necessarily a positive thing hinges upon the idea that a student going to Harvard that's always better than him going to school that's merely really good. If he gets a C average and doesn't absorb as much knowledge as he might have otherwise, he's still a step up on the guy who went to an excellent school, got straight A's, and mastered the course material. He may be comparatively ignorant, but he has a big piece of paper with an overrated school name emblazoned across the top of it.
That's because white people are so common that it's sort of silly to assume that as a default position. When 90% of the people are non-black, it's not terribly surprising when the person who lands a particular job is non-black.
You used to make halfway decent arguments, Schrod. What happened? You're in unusually bad form, here.
HAHAHAHAHAno.
Quotas are unconstitutional, yes. That doesn't mean they're not used, it just means that they're not called "quotas" and that nobody talks about them. Mosey on over to a UC some time and peek at the hiring process for staff positions, and then tell me that nobody uses quotas. No, there isn't a "quota" per se, but certain people get into hot water with certain other people if the racial distribution in their department doesn't "look like America".
Well, I think the fact that there can be greater genetic diversity between two average "black" people than between one of those "black" people and a third average "white" person kinda undercuts any claim of genetic inferiority of "blacks." But that's just me.
As I mentioned earlier, Harvard undergraduate has no trouble finding qualified minority applicants. If you want to talk about schools that might have to stretch to meet an unofficial quota, then you're going to have to look outside the top ten.
Harvard could burn half the applications right off the bat and still fill out a completely qualified class.
It doesn't correct it though.
What it does is the following...
1.) Mismatched students with high level schools
2.) Sneers of derision from nonminorities
3.) Confirms the false idea that minorities can't do well on their own and need help
I....I'm not sure how what you said relates to what I said. What I was saying there was that there is an obligation on the majority's part to make sure that minorities get a fair shake in the system. Then there is an obligation on the part of the minority to take advantage of that fair shake.
The (imperfect) solution: extend admissions/ hiring preferences for qualified minorities in these disadvantaged groups in an attempt to encourage upward mobility, broaden the expectations of diversities in middle and upper class schools, work environments and communities, provide realistic positive role models within disadvantaged ethnic groups, and provide opportunities
The rebuttal: omg affirmative action is racist against white people
1. Highly qualified non-minority students simply will NOT* "lose their places" to marginally-qualified minority students. Only marginally-qualified non-minority students will "lose their places" to marginally-qualified minority students.***
2. See #1. If some minority (AA) admits are "mismatched" at the school, then so too would the non-minorities they "replaced."
3. When certain minority groups are under-represented in the nationwide undergraduate student body, then---surprise!---something is happenning on the way to college to keep them from achieving as highly as other groups. So yes, they do need help to overcome institutional racism.
* I'm intentionally ignoring the potential existence of exceptions that could prove the rule.
***Please note that I don't like the phrasing here but I'm using it for brevity.
1) may be a concern, though I'd have to see some data on it. I understand that some schools provide mentoring and special resources to new students struggling with placement.
2 and 3 though, I don't see any real reason why we should make sure our policies should be crafted so as to placate racists.
edit: just to clarify, I know myself and i'm sure many others would have no problem with AA putting more minority students into classes they werent necessarily the most qualified for, as long as their race never entered into the consideration. From other posts if they're just going off family income many miniorities have a statistically lower income so they'll still get the help they need. I just believe the program should be more focused on helping lower class individuals as a whole rise up, rather than just the families that are minorities.
You're right, and although I 100% endorse affirmative action because it's better than nothing, we need to come up with policies to combat institutional racism throughout our society before it gets to the college level.
No one* who argues FOR affirmative action thinks that AA will solve the problem of racism in the USA.
*see above post.
Plus:
You want to see a racist system? Look at the legacy system, which I'm sure effects just as many people as affirmative action.
C'mon, Will, you're better than that.
Actually, Harvard quotas against Asians, though unofficially. I can't remember the exact number, but if they went on sheer merits alone, they'd see well over 50% Asians in every single class.
Honestly, the big losers are minorities who are overrepresented among the top applicants. As an Asian, though, I have no issue with this. There are a ton of positives to maintaining a diverse student body and having that quantity of Asians at my alma mater would have significantly degraded the quality of my education outside of the classroom.
Well, for one thing, the sole black dude no longer has to stand as the "lone black dude."
For another, yes. I think that 3 black dudes marks a significant improvement over 2 black dudes.
[quot]eWe know that admissions went up by a factor of 13, sure. But your assertion that this is necessarily a positive thing hinges upon the idea that a student going to Harvard that's always better than him going to school that's merely really good.[/quote]
Again, the topic is college in general, not just harvard. Moreover, the same argument can equally apply to the white kids who didn't get in as well.
Which is the problem. The "default" is that white people are entitled, and that minorities are not. While the fact that there are more white people than black people should not be surprising, the DEGREE that this is true SHOULD BE, as confirmed by studies on discrimination.
Great. So instead of saying, "Gee, I bet that black guy got in because he's black!", they'll now say, "Gee, I bet that black guy got in because he's poor!" Huge improvement. OTOH, white guys won't have similar assumtpions made about them, because they're entitled by "default."
But yes, I'm aware that extending a positive preference to minority applicants means a negative preference for non-minority applicants. I just don't think it's such a big deal in this context.
Agreed. Legacy is about the shittiest thing ever.
Luckily, it doesn't help much at many schools. It will be the tiebreaker between two equally qualified applicants but hardly a shoo-in (this differs school to school, of course). My dad had an old college friend who had all 3 of his sons apply to my alma mater (I was a legacy but it honestly had no factor). All 3 of the guy's sons were rejected early decision because they simply weren't qualified. There are lots of stories like this.
The legacy system should be scrapped, though, because I can't think of anything it contributes to the student experience.
The thing is, Affirmative Action and the Legacy system really only impact those top teir schools in the first place. Let's face it, it's a lot harder to claim an AA descrimination when you just got rejected from State then it is when you've been rejected from Harvard or Yale.
Which is why I think this whole thing is completely overblown. The number of people actually affected by affirmative action is quite small, certainly dispproportional to the number of people who bitch about it.
I was more concerned with your implication that that's the only, or principal argument against AA, but maybe I was reading too much into your snark.
Not really. Thanks to booming numbers of applicants, 2nd-3rd tier schools are getting really outstanding students and applicants. The issue that the Ivies are having (too many qualified students) has already trickled down hugely in the last 5 years.
From my own experience it did jack shit. The legacy system really only pushes the students in whose parents are filthy rich that they donate money. I had double legacy and still didn't get in. Wanna know why? The whole college system is a gamble. Legacy plays a much smaller role than i think people play it up to be.
Also, I do not believe affirmative action prevented me from getting in, but instead accept that it is damn hard to get into top tier schools.
Just my 2 cents.
1) That merit is something that can be objectively quantified, measured, and compared.
2) That, in the absense of AA, minorities would be judged solely on merit.
Now, the studies have shown that based on the racial conotations of name alone, a white person has a 50% better chance of getting a callback than a black person with equal resumes. Meaning that if minorities are get in solely on merit in the absense of AA, then non-minorities get in based on merit + 50%. I can therefore conclude that the extra 50%, one-third of the white people who got a callback, only got a callback for sounding white, and not as a result of merit.
Yes, some will claim that according to Freakonomics, it isn't clear whether employers discriminate against people with black sounding names out of racism, or if they discriminate against people with black sounding names because people with black sounding names tend to come from poor/uneducated households. Of course, there are two problems with that. 1) If black people are judged based on the household they grew up in, then how does this factor into a meritocracy, since they don't have any control over that? 2) If the initial assumption is true, shouldn't they recieve extra props for achieving the same resume despite being raise in a poor/uneducated household?
There are other studies that with similar backgrounds and demeanors, a white person with no criminal record is over TWICE as likely to find entry level work than a black person with no criminal record, and that a white person who's been jailed for selling crack is over THREE TIMES more likely than a black person with the same record. Even sadder, a white person who's been jailed for selling crack is still more likely to find a job than a black person with a clean record. Which means that when you look at a white guy in low level work, there's at least a 50% chance that he got the job over the black guy simply for being white.
So why is it that when a black guy gets a job over a white guy, the assumption is, "Well, he got in because of affirmative action!" But when a white person gets a job over a black guy, the assumption is almost never, "Well, he got in because he's white!"
I offer several explainations:
1) Pure financial selfishness and self-interests. One system benefits you, the other doesn't. Case closed.
2) The implied assumption that white people are deserving, and that black people are not, which means that any black guy of high standards must have gotten there for reasons other than merit.
3) The fact white people don't like to admit that they got an extra hand up simply for being white, because it cheapens their accomplishments. Where as the idea that a black guy got the job over them only cheapens their failures.
4) The idea that this is the way it ought to be, "normal," or "default" as Jeffe puts it. A school full of white people is normal. No reason to question that. A school with 1 or 2 black people in it is an oddity. I mean, I'm colorblind and all, but where in the world did those two black dudes come from? Are they affirmative action handouts, or what?
5) Personal narrative. People tend to overestimate their place in the universe. If one black guy got in because of affirmative action at a school that I got rejected from, then OMG, that slot must have been mine! If 10% of black students got in because of affirmative action, and I've only met one black guy since coming here, then OMG, that must be him!
6) Inability to recognize black people as individuals. Some of them recieve help from affirmative action, and some of them (from the 1970s) receive help from quotas. Therefore, they all do. But me? I got to where I am because I deserve it, bi-yotch!
I don't claim to be color blind by a long shot. I do see black, and I do see white. But I will say this: Whenever I meet individual black people and individual black people, what I don't see is "that guy is totally undeserving, and only got here because of his skin color!" In both cases, I know it happens, but I don't try to pin it on individuals. The latter assumption is much worse in the first IMO, because it requires a judgement call, and because the first assumption happens regardless of whether not you lie about it.
Honestly, listening to someone who claims to be color blind is like listening to someone who claims that their shit doesn't stink. Yeah, it sucks that your shit stinks and all, but don't try to cover it up by lying about it. Lying about it won't solve anything. The best thing that you can do is acknowledge that your shit stinks and try to keep it contained, rather than flinging it at other people and saying, "What's the problem? I don't smell anything. As far as I'm concerned, this is just how the place usually smells."
Why would having a lesser number of applicants affect the percentage to any considerable degree?
Yar, this is not the first thread where we have agreed, but it is the first time I've ever agreed with you so strongly that I wanted to hug you.
Eljeffe too, but he's known for a while that I've found his pasty ass irresistable.
The way I was thinking something like this:
Black applications: 20%
White: 60%
Other: 20% (ignored)
and the 5%/14%/17%/34% are percentages -of the total-. In other words:
Black call backs:
19%
No call backs: 1%
White call backs: 51%
White non-call backs: 9%
Other, not shown: 20%
Of course now that I poke the actual numbers through that looks unlikely. Probably the more normal approach.
1) Most of the eligible minorities won't be accepted because they aren't qualified, and more of the qualified because they aren't eligible. Black people have to work a lot harder in order to get a fighting chance in this country, and this policy basically punishes them for that extra effort.
2) Poor black people are generally worse off than poor white people. Rich black people are generally worse off than rich white people.
3) The perception of "every darkie I meet only got in because of AA" is already irrational, and irrational ideas don't die easily. We live in a country where a good chunk of the population still believes that Saddam had WMDs and ties to 9/11. Even if we switched to an income based system tommorow, that doesn't mean that everyone will immeadiately catch on and prouddly proclaim that they can now treat black people as equals overnight. Moreover, I see no value in allowing black people to be discriminated again, in order to appease to people who are already racist to begin with.
4) Even if we switched to income-AA tommorow and every racist in America was individually approached and made clear on this, that doesn't change their perception of black people who were essentially "grandfathered" in before the change. And since they don't know which ones were grandfathered in and which ones weren't, they can still make the same assumption of "every darkie I meet only got in because of AA" even with the change, solving nothing. Racist people will believe racist thoughts anyway, so why not try to help minorities in the process?
5) Even barring all this, we simply shift the assumption from "that black guy is probably unqualified and probably only got in because he was black," and change it to "that black guy is probably unqualified and only got in because he was poor." The phrases "black," "poor" and "unqualified" all become interchangeable, even though a) unqualified people haven't been allowed inside ever since quotas were ruled unconstitutional in the 1970s, and b) the qualified black people who manage to get in are unlikely to be poor. This racist assumption is actually strengthened whenever people make statements of "It's not a race issue, it's a class issue!"
6) The idea of "it's not a race issue, it's a class issue!" acts under the assumption that this policy will continue to help out the minorities who need it, while also helping out other poor white people who need help as well. If that were the case, then why not simply institute a second policy that would help the poor? It would be a far simpler solution, that would satisfy all sides and have virtually no protest whatsoever. While this policy claims to be the best of both worlds, it's actually nothing more than an attempt to have a direct net transfer to take opportunities from black people who don't have many opportunities as it is, and hand those opportunities off to white people instead.
7) Despite the fact that this policy will do nothing more than directly harm minorities who are already discriminated enough as it is, the proponents will pat themselves on the back for being "color blind." (i.e., adopting policies that will primarily benefit white people, but which don't explicitly say that they will primarily benefit white people.).
8) The proposed solution still does nothing to affect the problem of discrimination. Instead, it's a complete red herring. It's trying to shift the focus from one problem (black people are externally discriminated against and thus need an extra hand in order to compensate) to another problem (poor people don't have the means to uplift themselves.). It's like saying hearing that certain foods cause diabetes, and insisting that that we should shift the focus on heart disase. There are problems that minorities face today that have nothing to do with the amount of money they actually have.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1365/is_7_34/ai_112647828
But the system helps particular people, not general people. So why should we create a system based upon generals that deals with particulars?
Oughtn't every particular application be seen as itself, and not skewed by some general lense in the form of an over-bearing poorly managed and executed government program?
Thanks for the link.
So there seem to be 2 key statements from that article.
While I'm not completely discrediting these results, I really think the article needs to divulge some more information. For example, maybe the whites were much more qualified, in general. I'm not saying they were, but these results just aren't that credible without such information. Did the study even try to control for GPA, SAT, work experience, etc.? Maybe it did, but the way the article is written, I doubt it. "Including drug busts" really tries to twist our perception of the study. Did whites who had been arrested for dealing cocaine contribute very much to that 17%? Doubtful, but they would probably have us believe so.
Once again, is there a correlation between "white-sounding names" and education? I'd be interested in the results from a follow-up study involving only black applicants. We could divide their names into "white" and "black" names, although who knows what that means. Then, if the results still held up, I would believe them. Right now, not so much.
Once again, I'm not saying that race doesn't matter, I'm just saying this article doesn't do a good job of proving that it does.
"It is surprisingly close. In a carefully crafted experiment in which college students posing as job applicants visited 350 employers, the white ex-con was called back 17% of the time and the crime-free black applicant 14%. The disadvantage carried by a young black man applying for a job as a dishwasher or a driver is equivalent to forcing a white man to carry an 18-month prison record on his back."
It was a controlled study using actors, so I assume that the numers were equal. Which actually makes it a lot worse, when you consider the non-controlled white and black applicants that they were competing against.
For instance, white people are proportionately less likely to commit crimes than black people are. That means that the percentage of white applicants who have committed crimes should be much lower than the percentage of black applicants who have committed crimes. Which means that a black applicant with a clean record should out better among the black applicants than a white guy with a clean record stands out among the white applicants, and that a white guy with a bad record should stand stand out worse among the white applicants than a black guy with a bad record stands out among the black applicants.
Or two put it this way: A poor kid with a 1200 SAT is remarkable. A rich kid with a 1200 SAT is expected. If I'm not even willing to higher the poor kid with the 1200, even though I'll gladly hire rich kids with 1200 SATs, then it's unlikely that I'll hire any poor kids at all, because the bar is stacked so much higher, and because they have a harder time actually meeting that bar in the first place.
In other words, the problem is likely understated, rather than overstated.
"Two young high-school graduates with similar job histories and demeanors apply in person for jobs as waiters, warehousemen or other low-skilled positions advertised in a Milwaukee newspaper. One man is white and admits to having served 18 months in prison for possession of cocaine with intent to sell. The other is black and hasn't any criminal record."
Now, perhaps you can try assuming that black people are simply incapable of the same verbal communications that white people are, but I doubt it. Again, this was a controlled study. If black people can't even achieve equality in a controlled study, then how the fuck do you expect them to achieve it in the real world?
I mean, yes, maybe you can try to cherry pick and say "well, maybe it was this, or this." The problem is the fact that "this" only seems to be a bad thing when the black guy applies, and "that" only seems to be a plus when the white guy applies. At what point do you you finally say, "you know... maybe it really was because he's black?"
Side anecdote: I remember once being in the hallway of the department, and two people were talking about this third girl. Girl #1 wanted to know if girl #2 could describe girl #3, and girl #2 responded by saying vague things like, "Oh, she's cute, short, wears her hair back, has these nice little shoes," etc. And I just wanted to interrupt by saying, "She's black. She's probably one of the only black girl in the entire fricking department." I have a hard time believing that it completely slipped girl #2's mind that girl #3 was black, but the way she was pretending not to notice was both amusing and condescending. I'm sure that if someone accused her of being a racist, she would probably be the type of person to respond with, "That's not true, I happen to have black friends!"
Yes. Maybe white people are all just more qualified in general. Even in a controlled study where both applicants (who were only posing, not applying for real) have similar resumes and backgrounds. It's not racism at all, it's just that white people are always better overall when all other factors are eliminated. :roll: