High-School Senior Controversial WSJ Article

[IrishLax]

As for racial quotas, etc. I think it's a load of crap on some levels and makes sense on others.

Example A) Real example, a kid who lived across the street from me in a house of comparable value with two parents, same advantages, played lacrosse, etc. was African American. Really good dude, really smart also. But, objectively, he was a way worse candidate than I was applying to college when you looked at GPA, SATs, AP classes, leadership positions, etc. We got into all the same schools and it was possible for him to get a bunch of scholarships that wouldn't be available to me simply because of his skin color. How does this make any sense at all when we have the same deck of cards to play with?

Example B) A hypothetical kid has to work after school just to feed himself - or maybe even his siblings - instead of partaking in fluffy extracuriculars... and even has to choose between studying/homework and actual work-work sometimes. He gets no outside aid or test prep or anything like that and has to attend an overcrowded public school with poor teachers. Are you telling me that kids 3.5 GPA with a 1300 SAT is actually worse than a 4.0 GPA with a 1600 SAT from a rich kid who has been getting special instruction his whole life and has an inflated SAT score thanks to years of test prep? Because it's not and I totally understand "affirmative action" for kids like this.

Example C) What if the kid in Example B is white or Asian but has the same disadvantages? Why does he get screwed?

To me, the problem is that you have thousands of applications with only a sparse amount of time/resources that can be devoted to reviewing each one... so schools have to come up with shortcuts to find the "best" or "most deserving" kids to admit. It's a flawed system, and the biggest flaw is at the youth schooling level with the instruction varies so much from county to county, state to state, and private to public... and where GPAs/SATs only tell a very small, incomplete (and often inaccurate) story of what someone has to offer.

 

[Ndaccountant]

Regarding race in college admissions, there's strong statistical evidence that the Ivies discriminate against some minorities (namely Asians and Jews) in their admissions process.

Express racial quotas are unconstitutional (Cal v. Bakke), but most elite universities still get away with using them by obscuring the process (they claim to consider many factors, of which race is only one, but their racial percentages are suspiciously stable from year to year).

These schools have to maintain the illusion of diversity for a lot of reasons, but they're really most interested in money, which means class tends to be the driving force behind their admissions policies. That's why they expect an absurdly broad range of experience from high school kids-- because only those applicants with wealthy and motivated parents have the resources and guidance necessary to assemble an acceptable resume.

Most of the arguments over Affirmative Action here, both for and against, are based on meritocracy; and rightfully so, since it's a huge part of American mythology. But it's largely bullsh!t when it comes to elite universities. The kids they really want are the future senators, judges, and CEOs; those people overwhelmingly come from wealthy families, so those are the kids that get accepted.

It's important because there's no better way to ensure your children enjoy a stable bourgeois life than to get them into an elite university. But as admissions standards get higher and higher, that path to prosperity is available to fewer and fewer people; it's a symptom of the shrinking opportunity in this country as the top 1% continue the rig the system in their favor.

My wife and I give 5% of our annual pre-tax income to our parish, and the other 5% to ND. We do it partly because we love our alma mater (as an institution, it had a larger impact on our formation as individuals than any other), but also because it increases the chances that our boys will get accepted there in ~15 years (thank God ND reserves 25% of each class for legacies). With the way admissions standards are moving, ND is likely the best school they'll have a shot at getting into by far.

It's an unjust system, but we have no choice but the play the game.

Go look at what happened when Cali, Texas and Florida eliminated affirmative action practices. What group increased enrollment? Well, not white males. It was Asians. So, one could say that Asians were the most recent group to shoulder the disadventageous treatment.

 

[irishpat183]

Dude, you said "black americans who make more than $75,000 in income per year live in neighborhoods with higher poverty than whites making less than $30,000 per year".
That's wrong, and you can search around DailyKos all you want, you'll never find a "report" that says that.

That's the dumbest thing I think I've ever heard in my life.

Kuddos to calling him out on it. Just ignorant.

 

[Ndaccountant]

As for racial quotas, etc. I think it's a load of crap on some levels and makes sense on others.

Example A) Real example, a kid who lived across the street from me in a house of comparable value with two parents, same advantages, played lacrosse, etc. was African American. Really good dude, really smart also. But, objectively, he was a way worse candidate than I was applying to college when you looked at GPA, SATs, AP classes, leadership positions, etc. We got into all the same schools and it was possible for him to get a bunch of scholarships that wouldn't be available to me simply because of his skin color. How does this make any sense at all when we have the same deck of cards to play with?

Example B) A hypothetical kid has to work after school just to feed himself - or maybe even his siblings - instead of partaking in fluffy extracuriculars... and even has to choose between studying/homework and actual work-work sometimes. He gets no outside aid or test prep or anything like that and has to attend an overcrowded public school with poor teachers. Are you telling me that kids 3.5 GPA with a 1300 SAT is actually worse than a 4.0 GPA with a 1600 SAT from a rich kid who has been getting special instruction his whole life and has an inflated SAT score thanks to years of test prep? Because it's not and I totally understand "affirmative action" for kids like this.

Example C) What if the kid in Example B is white or Asian but has the same disadvantages? Why does he get screwed?

To me, the problem is that you have thousands of applications with only a sparse amount of time/resources that can be devoted to reviewing each one... so schools have to come up with shortcuts to find the "best" or "most deserving" kids to admit. It's a flawed system, and the biggest flaw is at the youth schooling level with the instruction varies so much from county to county, state to state, and private to public... and where GPAs/SATs only tell a very small, incomplete (and often inaccurate) story of what someone has to offer.

The problem is that AA is raced based. There was a time and place for it. As LBJ said "You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race, and then say, 'You are free to compete...' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair".

If you ask me, if any form of AA exists going forward it should be economic based.

 

[irishpat183]

I know it happens. It is called affirmative acation. I think that it has a foundation in fairness. I suspect that you do not agree with me, but it doesn't exclude anyone. Some just have to work harder to make it into the schools they want to go to. You tell me all the time that life is not fair, that those people simply have to work all the harder to make it. Are you suggesting that this applies to one group and not the other?

Affirmative action is worthless on so many levels. And it does exclude people....the guy who would've gotten into the school had it not been for some BS racial quota.

"Affirmative action is the attempt to deal with malignant racism by instituting benign racism."

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Go look at what happened when Cali, Texas and Florida eliminated affirmative action practices. What group increased enrollment? Well, not white males. It was Asians. So, once could say that Asians were the most recent group to shoulder the disadventageous treatment.

Absolutely. My point was that colleges are using racial quotas to achieve whatever diversity profile they think will be most advantageous to their marketing. Some minorities are hurt, and others are advantaged; they don't really care, as it's about maintaining a superficial image, and not about redressing systemic injustice.

To me, the problem is that you have thousands of applications with only a sparse amount of time/resources that can be devoted to reviewing each one... so schools have to come up with shortcuts to find the "best" or "most deserving" kids to admit. It's a flawed system, and the biggest flaw is at the youth schooling level with the instruction varies so much from county to county, state to state, and private to public... and where GPAs/SATs only tell a very small, incomplete (and often inaccurate) story of what someone has to offer.

All of your examples presuppose that the driving factor behind college admissions is meritocracy. It's not, though proving it is difficult since they're making these decisions among such an elite group of students to begin with. The driving factor is money; they're most interested in admitting kids who will one day become rich and/or powerful, and send their own kids back to the school to continue the cycle.

There are lots of ways the admission process could be changed to be more meritocratic, or to better encourage genuine diversity, but elite universities haven't shown any interest in implementing them.

If you ask me, if any form of AA exists going forward it should be economic based.

Bingo.

 

[ACamp1900]

Affirmative action is worthless on so many levels. And it does exclude people....the guy who would've gotten into the school had it not been for some BS racial quota.

"Affirmative action is the attempt to deal with malignant racism by instituting benign racism."

I have so many stories about family members getting the bird due to the color of their skin from the 70's to early 90's... My parents were even told they were the wrong color once... 'fairness'

The whole point of AA was to level the playing ground right? Well it did nothing to the ‘privileged’ it meant to hit as they lost nothing (they already had theirs)… all it did was punish/deny opportunites to hard working lower and middle class people that happened to look like them. ‘fairness’

 

[Redbar]

Regarding race in college admissions, there's strong statistical evidence that the Ivies discriminate against some minorities (namely Asians and Jews) in their admissions process.

Express racial quotas are unconstitutional (Cal v. Bakke), but most elite universities still get away with using them by obscuring the process (they claim to consider many factors, of which race is only one, but their racial percentages are suspiciously stable from year to year).

These schools have to maintain the illusion of diversity for a lot of reasons, but they're really most interested in money, which means class tends to be the driving force behind their admissions policies. That's why they expect an absurdly broad range of experience from high school kids-- because only those applicants with wealthy and motivated parents have the resources and guidance necessary to assemble an acceptable resume.

Most of the arguments over Affirmative Action here, both for and against, are based on meritocracy; and rightfully so, since it's a huge part of American mythology. But it's largely bullsh!t when it comes to elite universities. The kids they really want are the future senators, judges, and CEOs; those people overwhelmingly come from wealthy families, so those are the kids that get accepted.

It's important because there's no better way to ensure your children enjoy a stable bourgeois life than to get them into an elite university. But as admissions standards get higher and higher, that path to prosperity is available to fewer and fewer people; it's a symptom of the shrinking opportunity in this country as the top 1% continue the rig the system in their favor.

My wife and I give 5% of our annual pre-tax income to our parish, and the other 5% to ND. We do it partly because we love our alma mater (as an institution, it had a larger impact on our formation as individuals than any other), but also because it increases the chances that our boys will get accepted there in ~15 years (thank God ND reserves 25% of each class for legacies). With the way admissions standards are moving, ND is likely the best school they'll have a shot at getting into by far.

It's an unjust system, but we have no choice but the play the game.

This is what cracks me up. Whiskey you nailed it, but your qualification comes up short, meritocracy is a huge part of American Mythology, just not it's reality. AND this is just not the case with American universities it is the case with every facet of American life.
American race history is a history of exclusion, not just at universities, in board rooms, at country clubs, at lunch counters at water fountains. Of course people who got placed on third base or second base or even those unfortunate souls who got placed on first base are going to say all that matters is that I scored a run, never looking at the fact that the longest odds are getting a hit in the first place and the pitcher has a file hanging from his belt and a jar of vaseline on the back of the mound. (Maybe a bad analogy.)

Point is it is absolutely pathetic to hear white American males or in this case a female cry about how unfair the world is. Yeah, I totally get the outrage, the feeling you have been lied to, but consider for a second what if the lie was not that everyone who goes through our societal construct without getting arrested and with a modicum of success is guaranteed a spot at an ivy and six figure job (ok that is a lie), but what if the bigger lie is that white people are better than everyone else, more deserving than everyone else?

 

[irishpat183]

I have so many stories about family members getting the bird due to the color of their skin from the 70's to early 90's... My parents were even told they were the wrong color once... 'fairness'

The whole point of AA was to level the playing ground right? Well it did nothing to the ‘privileged’ it meant to hit as they lost nothing (they already had theirs)… all it did was punish/deny opportunites to hard working lower and middle class people that happened to look like them. ‘fairness’

Exactly. The problem will ALL emotion based legislation is that it never hits the intended targets (like the uber-popular gun control crap)

 

[gkIrish]

I have so many stories about family members getting the bird due to the color of their skin from the 70's to early 90's... My parents were even told they were the wrong color once... 'fairness'

The whole point of AA was to level the playing ground right? Well it did nothing to the ‘privileged’ it meant to hit as they lost nothing (they already had theirs)… all it did was punish/deny opportunites to hard working lower and middle class people that happened to look like them. ‘fairness’

 

[autry_denson]

Originally Posted by Irish Houstonian View Post
Dude, you said "black americans who make more than $75,000 in income per year live in neighborhoods with higher poverty than whites making less than $30,000 per year".
That's wrong, and you can search around DailyKos all you want, you'll never find a "report" that says that.

That's the dumbest thing I think I've ever heard in my life.

Kuddos to calling him out on it. Just ignorant.

hold on a second, did you guys look at what I sent? Let me share the link again - is it possible to keep denying something when you're looking at it?

http://www.s4.brown.edu/us2010/Data/Report/report0727.pdf

 

[irishpat183]

This is what cracks me up. Whiskey you nailed it, but your qualification comes up short, meritocracy is a huge part of American Mythology, just not it's reality. AND this is just not the case with American universities it is the case with every facet of American life.
American race history is a history of exclusion, not just at universities, in board rooms, at country clubs, at lunch counters at water fountains. Of course people who got placed on third base or second base or even those unfortunate souls who got placed on first base are going to say all that matters is that I scored a run, never looking at the fact that the longest odds are getting a hit in the first place and the pitcher has a file hanging from his belt and a jar of vaseline on the back of the mound. (Maybe a bad analogy.)

Point is it is absolutely pathetic to hear white American males or in this case a female cry about how unfair the world is. Yeah, I totally get the outrage, the feeling you have been lied to, but consider for a second what if the lie was not that everyone who goes through our societal construct without getting arrested and with a modicum of success is guaranteed a spot at an ivy and six figure job (ok that is a lie), but what if the bigger lie is that white people are better than everyone else, more deserving than everyone else?

Now we're getting into the "my problems are worse than yours"....This is what affirmative action has created.

Who the hell do people think they are to tell someone that "they don't know what it's like"? So because I'm white american, my problems will never stack up?

Gimmie a break

 

[Irish Houstonian]

I think there's a difference between acknowledging that we are born unequal and *actively designing* a societal system of unfair achievement. The former doesn't justify the latter. If anything, it exacerbates the very phenomenon we already dislike.

 

[Emcee77]

As for racial quotas, etc. I think it's a load of crap on some levels and makes sense on others.

Example A) Real example, a kid who lived across the street from me in a house of comparable value with two parents, same advantages, played lacrosse, etc. was African American. Really good dude, really smart also. But, objectively, he was a way worse candidate than I was applying to college when you looked at GPA, SATs, AP classes, leadership positions, etc. We got into all the same schools and it was possible for him to get a bunch of scholarships that wouldn't be available to me simply because of his skin color. How does this make any sense at all when we have the same deck of cards to play with?

Example B) A hypothetical kid has to work after school just to feed himself - or maybe even his siblings - instead of partaking in fluffy extracuriculars... and even has to choose between studying/homework and actual work-work sometimes. He gets no outside aid or test prep or anything like that and has to attend an overcrowded public school with poor teachers. Are you telling me that kids 3.5 GPA with a 1300 SAT is actually worse than a 4.0 GPA with a 1600 SAT from a rich kid who has been getting special instruction his whole life and has an inflated SAT score thanks to years of test prep? Because it's not and I totally understand "affirmative action" for kids like this.

Example C) What if the kid in Example B is white or Asian but has the same disadvantages? Why does he get screwed?

To me, the problem is that you have thousands of applications with only a sparse amount of time/resources that can be devoted to reviewing each one... so schools have to come up with shortcuts to find the "best" or "most deserving" kids to admit. It's a flawed system, and the biggest flaw is at the youth schooling level with the instruction varies so much from county to county, state to state, and private to public... and where GPAs/SATs only tell a very small, incomplete (and often inaccurate) story of what someone has to offer.

I think we all knew kids like the one in your Example A ... it always seemed unfair to me that some black kids at my high school who were very average students, or not much above average, were admitted to UVa (invariably, these kids came from middle class families ... I am not talking about underprivileged kids here), whereas some other kids who were among the most talented in the class were rejected.

But isn't the argument for that sort of policy something like this: if a minority population has historically faced discrimination and remains disproportionately marginalized, we should give people of that population as many opportunities as we can so that they can be successful. Then, their success will 1) provide young people of their racial/ethnic background with a realistic role model, and 2) it will convince people in the broader working world that people of that background can be successful professionals, thereby decreasing the likelihood that those people will engage in discrimination in the future. So it's not the kid who lived across the street from you that we are trying to help by giving the kid across the street from you a leg up with affirmative action policies ... it's black people who DON'T have his opportunities, who HE will be able to help someday, both directly and indirectly.

Of course, based on that rationale, that plan is only worthwhile if you agree that discrimination remains a problem. I suppose some people would say that it isn't any more. Don't really want to take a position personally ... just wanted to provide the counterargument for the sake of discussion.

 

[Irish4Life09]

I think her father is Mark Kevin Allen.....

 

[Whiskeyjack]

This is what cracks me up. Whiskey you nailed it, but your qualification comes up short, meritocracy is a huge part of American Mythology, just not it's reality.

My point was that meritocracy is bullsh!t on both sides of the Affirmative Action debate. These schools generally aren't admitting promising minority students from the inner city. They're taking kids like Lax's neighbor-- a racial minority from a stable middle-class family that enjoys most of the advantages that his white neighbors enjoy. So Affirmative Action gives that kid an edge over someone like Lax, because though Lax's objective scores might be a bit better, they're mostly the same, and the minority kid helps them fill a quota.

In practice, it does little to help redress systemic discrimination against certain racial groups. If they were interested in promoting diversity and redressing past societal evils, they'd consider class alongside (or maybe instead of) race. But they don't, because they want to maximize their endowment, not social justice.

As a general rule, there's a much stronger correlation between opportunity and class than race.

 

[irishpat183]

hold on a second, did you guys look at what I sent? Let me share the link again - is it possible to keep denying something when you're looking at it?

http://www.s4.brown.edu/us2010/Data/Report/report0727.pdf

"Views
expressed here are those of
the authors."

Yeah.

"As black-white segregation has slowly declined since 1990, blacks have become less isolated
from Hispanics and Asians, but their exposure to whites has hardly changed. Affluent blacks
have only marginally higher contact with whites than do poor blacks."


WTF? Talk about a load of crap. How in the hell does one measure "exposure to whites" as they call it in the study?


I mean, really? Studies like this are what holds our nation back. Do the race-baiters....errrr...authors know that whites are the majority of our population? Or that maybe it's that blacks/hispanics CHOOSE NOT to live around whites?????

 

[Irish Houstonian]

Regarding race in college admissions, there's strong statistical evidence that the Ivies discriminate against...Asians...

...

Perhaps they're just "leveling the playing field"? According to Malcom Gladwell, Asians have an advantage over non-Asians in terms of math skills and work ethic, because of they way their culture developed around rice-growing. So it's not "fair" that their ancestors cultivated rice and others didn't. Surely socially-conscious admissions offices should take this into account.

 

[ACamp1900]

LOL

 

[irishpat183]

There is no such thing as equality. That is a term that is being used by some to further their agenda. Not all people are created equal. And that has nothing to do with race. So guys can run faster, jump higher, are better at math...etc.

 

[ACamp1900]

So it's not "fair" that their ancestors cultivated rice and others didn't. Surely socially-conscious admissions offices should take this into account.

Brown rice at that!!

 

[irishpat183]

Perhaps they're just "leveling the playing field"? According to Malcom Gladwell, Asians have an advantage over non-Asians in terms of math skills and work ethic, because of they way their culture developed around rice-growing. So it's not "fair" that their ancestors cultivated rice and others didn't. Surely socially-conscious admissions offices should take this into account.

LOL......

 

[SaltyND24]

Question for clarity: Are we talking about a matter of qualified vs. more-qualified, or are we talking more along the lines of un-qualified vs. qualified? Sure it would be lovely if there were a more uniform way to go about college admissions, but if you have student A with a 3.5 gpa and student B w/ a 3.75 gpa with all other factors being similar, and student A is black and student B is white, should we really bitch about student A getting in and student B not getting in???

My thing is that there are many kids who can succeed at an institution of higher learning who don't have 3.5+ gpas in high school, hell I knew many who fit that criteria at ND that then went on to graduate, law, or med school...but with the cry of AA being a problem of entitlement, isn't it then kinda fair to say that legacies should then be scrapped as well???

Like Whiskey said, most of these colleges aren't pulling, slashing, or chomping to get at many promising students in inner-city schools. Wu-tang said it best...C.R.E.A.M.

 

[GoIrish41]

. She didn't say anything about race but you felt compelled to.

Her quote:

"For starters, had I known two years ago what I know now, I would have gladly worn a headdress to school. Show me to any closet, and I would've happily come out of it. "Diversity!" I offer about as much diversity as a saltine cracker. If it were up to me, I would've been any of the diversities: Navajo, Pacific Islander, anything. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, I salute you and your 1/32 Cherokee heritage."

This is about race. I didn't bring it up. I commented on her bringing it up.

 

[gkIrish]

Question for clarity: Are we talking about a matter of qualified vs. more-qualified, or are we talking more along the lines of un-qualified vs. qualified? Sure it would be lovely if there were a more uniform way to go about college admissions, but if you have student A with a 3.5 gpa and student B w/ a 3.75 gpa with all other factors being similar, and student A is black and student B is white, should we really bitch about student A getting in and student B not getting in???

My thing is that there are many kids who can succeed at an institution of higher learning who don't have 3.5+ gpas in high school, hell I knew many who fit that criteria at ND that then went on to graduate, law, or med school...but with the cry of AA being a problem of entitlement, isn't it then kinda fair to say that legacies should then be scrapped as well???

Like Whiskey said, most of these colleges aren't pulling slashing chomping to get at many promising students at inner-city schools. Wu-tang said it best...C.R.E.A.M.

Here is how law school works. They look at your college GPA and your LSAT score. That's essentially it. Minorities with lower scores and GPAs get accepted to better schools. I had the same GPA and LSAT as some minority students at top 10 law schools but I had no chance to get in. And I come from a lower middle class family. To me, that's wrong.

 

[Polish Leppy 22]

Her quote:

"For starters, had I known two years ago what I know now, I would have gladly worn a headdress to school. Show me to any closet, and I would've happily come out of it. "Diversity!" I offer about as much diversity as a saltine cracker. If it were up to me, I would've been any of the diversities: Navajo, Pacific Islander, anything. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, I salute you and your 1/32 Cherokee heritage."

This is about race. I didn't bring it up. I commented on her bringing it up.

Race and ethnicity aren't the same. Did you miss your cultura sensitivity class/ training?

 

[Redbar]

I think there's a difference between acknowledging that we are born unequal and *actively designing* a societal system of unfair achievement. The former doesn't justify the latter. If anything, it exacerbates the very phenomenon we already dislike.

What do you mean by "we are born unequal"? If we are all born unequal why was/is there a need to hold back large segments of the population. Why not let nature take it's course. Maybe those old colonialist didn't have as much faith in the nature side of the argument as you do?

 

[Irish Houstonian]

What do you mean by "we are born unequal"? If we are all born unequal why was there a need to hold back large segments of the population. Why not let nature take it's course.

I'm not sure what you're asking.

 

[SaltyND24]

Here is how law school works. They look at your college GPA and your LSAT score. That's essentially it. Minorities with lower scores and GPAs get accepted to better schools. I had the same GPA and LSAT as some minority students at top 10 law schools but I had no chance to get in. And I come from a lower middle class family. To me, that's wrong.

my question was more along the lines of hs to undergrad, but I see your point and agree with it...I personally feel socioeconomic status should be weighed weighed much more than race...

 

[Redbar]

Now we're getting into the "my problems are worse than yours"....This is what affirmative action has created.

Who the hell do people think they are to tell someone that "they don't know what it's like"? So because I'm white american, my problems will never stack up?

Gimmie a break

I'm really not commenting on people's problems, more their sense of ENTITLEMENT and what they think they deserve based upon their perceived "status" in society.