Does Diversity Punish Asians, Poor Whites and Others?
mindingthecampus.com
mindingthecampus.com
I'm not commenting on the answer to those questions, subtly or otherwise. (Except inasmuch that some people would rather we not ask them at all and just take various answers as axiomatically true without examination.)
It is mathematically impossible to privilege one group without "disprivileging" another in a zero-sum game like college admissions. The question of whether alumni-preference "punishes" some people isn't even interesting, the question is a borderline-tautological "yes". The question is, is that what we want to do? And even if historically the answer was "yes", is it still what we want to do? And what do we want to do in the future?
I'm not commenting on the answer to those questions, subtly or otherwise. (Except inasmuch that some people would rather we not ask them at all and just take various answers as axiomatically true without examination.)
(just for reference, around the time of the supreme court cases re: Michigan Law School, alumni preference was weighted at least as strongly as race amongst schools that used quantitative point systems for admissions)
The question of whether alumni-preference "punishes" some people
isn't even interesting, the question is a borderline-tautological "yes".
The question is, is that what we want to do?
EDIT: quote format.
Most arguments against removing alumni preference only apply when you look at one school in isolation and simply disappear when you consider all schools removing them at once.
(Federal non-profit tax-emempt status should probably be included in my list of things-that-should-disappear-unless alumni-preference-is-dropped, but I haven't thought seriously about the likely objections (religious schools etc.))
Yes, those 5% may become factory managers or programmers or something similar, which is great. But those 5% black people, will act as role models for the other 30 million black people that currently form the largest social underclass, and are responsible for a lot of social problems at the moment.
So I'd say that the second goal, that of creating an educated black populace, creating a 'cosby family' that the current underclass can look up to, is more important than creating another bland middle-manager.
2. But I know that if we base our decisions on the (elusive) benefit to the society versus justice, we are taking a step towards a totalitarian system. This is not where we want to go, and (I think) not what the proponents of the Affirmative Action intended.
3. I am sure there must be ways to help the underprivileged individuals, and maybe underprivileged strata, of our society without having to resort to such actions.
That's the same problem you have - your society strongly associates black with negative. That stereotype will continue to exist, unless there is a proper movement of blacks into the standard college educated strata. Otherwise, they stay down in the 'untouchable' caste.
The child of a white person who was once poor does not have this stigma anymore. But the black persons child is still stuck with the stigma, because it's part of his skin-color.
That's the problem - your lower class is also the black class, and if you want to do things only the 'just' way, then it will remain that way for a long time to come.
And by the way, if you want equal admissions, then accept that you will not get into those schools because chinese immigrants and jewish people will probably get the best scores. So please, advocate merit based only or advocate that the school can choose, and accept that it can choose blacks.
What you said about the negative stereotypes about blacks is unfortunately very true. But: affirmative action does not fight against the stereotypes, it fights against the underrepresentation. As some other comments said, it may even reinforce the stereotypes (I am not sure if it works that way, however). While we cannot completely avoid stereotypes, we can try and make sure they do not affect how the people are actually treated. Well, to some extent, hopefully large extent.
You mentioned no stigma on a white child. Some people do talk about rednecks and so on. And indeed there are programs similar to Affirmative Action intended for, say, people from underprivileged backgrounds in the mountains of Kentucky. Another example is programs for Native Americans (or "first people", or whatever today's PC name is). They have been traditionally underprivileged, but I do not have they have a stigma, not for a long time.
accept that you will not get into those schools
because chinese immigrants and jewish people
will probably get the best scores
Campbell's law: The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.
Was there not a problem with one of those schools where 40% where jewish when admission was only based on test-scores?
Sure but not different admissions criteria based on geography. You still have to meet the criteria regardless. Not so for race based preference systems which are well known for relaxing standards to achieve the desired racial balance.
If a particular school is 40% Jewish and those students are all there because they met the admissions criteria then so be it. It's absurd to create an elite admissions policy and then create preference programs for designated races. I'd much rather the standards were lowered until the desired racial balance occurred organically. However, universities seem to want it both ways.
All these people who cry out for affirmative action to be removed, I will see them write two pages about why it should not be there, but they will never advocate the really fair solution, because it will make them extremlely unlikely to ever get into the schools.
What you are saying is pretty silly, by the way. An elite school like that is admitting perhaps 50 black people. Are you saying of all the applications from black people they received, they did not find 50 that met the cut-off mark? That's a bit unlikely, is it not?
The score of the blacks may have been below the average of the other admitees, but they were not BAD. It's an elite school, they will not put dunces in there, and there are certainly enough black applicants with the appropriate scores.
If you want a score based system, then say so and accept that whites will be a tiny minority in those schools. But don't try to have this hybrid thing that keeps the whites in and the blacks out.
Either scores and nothing else, or let the schools decide. Choose one, and lobby for that, and not AGAINST affirmative action.
But this is essentially how admissions works for whites and asians. They look at your scores if you make the cutoff your in (barring sports scholarships or legacies which I'm also against).
Are you saying of all the applications from black people they received, they did not find 50 that met the cut-off mark? That's a bit unlikely, is it not?
Then why do they have different admissions standards for minority applicants? If it were possible for minority applicants to meet the normal admissions standards affirmative action programs would be unnecessary.
If you want a score based system, then say so and accept that whites will be a tiny minority in those schools
I want a score based system. I'm against affirmative action precisely because it is a hybrid system. Whites and Asians are held to one standard, minorities to another. As I've said before, if you want to admit lower scoring minority applicants adjust the general admissions standards accordingly so they can get in.
What do you think of the fact that score based systems will lead to a very one-track kind of thinking process coming out of those schools?
It also seems lately that half the people I meet are half Mexican and half white. What should they put? Every one I have asked puts Hispanic because in general they get more that way.
I guess it comes down to an obviously flawed system. Possibly "diversify" based on income, or location over race.
The problem with this though is that whites have to pretend that the system doesn't exist for it work. If dark-skinned students are allowed in because of a well known preference program the stereotype is in fact reinforced.
So in the medium term, the current state that the black community is in will change towards a more intellectual and educated one.
Just food for thought, not serious proposals.
can you imagine if MLK's famous speech was this instead:
"I want my children to be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Unless applying for college. Or grants. Or aid from the government. Or (...)"
Of course, you realise what you're saying then? You're saying you want 30% of all students in all elite colleges to likely come from new york. That's going to create a very monotonous, one-track kind of thought coming out of those places. Those schools that are currently the best in the world, will start producing similar thinking people with little exposure to diversity of thought or diversity of individuals.
Is that what you want? You are willing to fundamentally change the characters of these schools to meet some criteria of 'fair' that basically only uses a single attribute to judge people?
I wrote a glowing review for my alma mater about a student I interviewed which focused on her cheerleading, sense of humor, and overcoming of societal discrimination, because "smart Asian worked hard and wants to go to med school" is not a strong marketing move. (Incidentally, you know how culture sometimes gets in the way of academic success? In this case, a cultural background which places emphasis on hard work and scholastic achievement is a tremendous impediment to maximizing for what admissions officers actually care about.)
In the alternative, you can have your kids apply to a Japanese university, where they will be judged by their test scores without regard to their race.
Also - and this is not exactly a problem, just a methodological feature to be aware of - it appears that they produced their models by aggregating the data together across schools.
That's interesting. I'm curious what the cause for this is.
The immigrants are coming in not feeling like they are the bottom of the barrel.
Incidentally, while I appear to mostly disagree with you on this issue, I had to upvote you back to neutral (1 point) because I thought your comment was legitimate and thoughtful and did not deserve a downvote.
People who are raised in a lower class from which there is no breaking out become apathetic. In the west-indies or in Africa, even though they were poor, they could always become rich. They could always become upper class just by working hard and making money.
In the U.S, this was impossible until very very recently, because just by being black, you could not be upper class. If MTV would not play black music, then what white man would say 'sir' to a black man in the 80s?
When there is no opportunity for you to advance, you become apathetic and resigned to your fate. It's difficult to work hard when you have already been told you'll never get promoted.
Immigrant blacks don't see the ceiling. As more immigrant blacks come in, the american black children are looking up to these people, and the attitudes are changing. But this is a slow process, and would be accelerated by increasing the average educational level of the American black.
This debate has been going on for 40 years now. I would think by now its been established that diversity has importance in its own right, not just in what it does for individuals who are included on campus for non-traditional reasons, but also for all the other people on campus. Certainly, diversity on campus is important for everyone who aspires to any kind of leadership position, since any leader today will be leading in a diverse environment.
Shouldn't we give affirmative-action style bonuses to conservatives, since they are grossly underrepresented on campus? After all, everyone ought to agree that students should be exposed to such common viewpoints; whether you think that's because student education is being limited for lack of exposure to their different viewpoints or whether you consider the ideas so transparently false that students can be safely exposed to the ideas so that they can be shown how transparently false they are, using the same racial-diversity logic says that we ought to be giving huge conservative bonuses for admission and tenure positions. What advantage is "diversity" if the result is merely a rainbow of people all identically singing the praises of the white-liberal-sourced diversity ideals?
The affirmative action for diversity logic does not trivially obviously cover skin color issues. It argues for ideological diversity, then slides in race as a proxy for ideology when you aren't looking. I consider the entire race-based affirmative action line of logic pretty offensively racist if you actually analyze it.
(I'm not arguing in favor of conservative affirmative action bonuses. Look more closely if you think I just did.)
What this implies is that there will be a diverse range of skin color across all classes, reducing the perception that black skin implies lower class.
Doing so only for conservatives does nothing to help this goal.
Your solution for the societal crisis you face is to keep those at the bottom at the bottom, just so that your kids will have a 0.002% higher chance of entering one of a few colleges.
You have a large underclass of people whose parents were raised in institutionalised dicrimination. These people are the lowest caste of your society. There is a policy in place that favours a very few of these people to get into spots they would not otherwise get into.
Without this, the status-quo would continue to exist. The problem is this - the status quo is pretty bad. Blacks are less educated, less likely to get jobs, need more welfare, have higher crime rate.
To me, getting more into college seems like it would solve some of those problems.
"Your solution"
Wrong. I have not advocated a solution, only the proper questions.
I don't question the arguments. I question their temporal relevancy. So let me try asking you a question that nobody else seems to be able to answer: When are we done? What concrete criterion do we use to figure out when to shut off the counter-racism?
Europe, which is pretty diverse, is also massively successful.
These people who are at the bottom will stay even more firmly entrenched at the bottom, will commit more crime and continue to justify the stereotypes.
If you believe that blacks are dumber than anyone else (like the linked article), then you have to support affirmative action, otherwise you are setting up a society segregated by intelligence, which will also directly correspond to skin color.
So blacks will always be at the bottom, and people of black skin will automatically fall into that category with very little chance of getting out, even if they are clever, as there will be many people justifying the opposite stereotype.
Imagine all colleges had 5% less space for students. That's the only effect of affirmative action. If you want to campaign for something, then campaign that 5% more students should be taken in - one for every student who got in as a result of affirmative action. That's a win-win.
It isn't, for the same reason that having one drinking fountain in twenty marked Whites Only has salience far in excess of a 5% decrease in the supply of drinking fountains.
Yes, there is this theoretical moral debate about what is right and what is wrong, but the real effect of doing what you say is right, would result in universities of only asians and whites, and the blacks mostly doing manual labour.
Is THAT right?
So it's okay to select mid western people, because they are different from new york people, but it's not okay to select black over white?
Those picky schools mix and match to have a wide array of people. They don't just use scores. If they did, there would be a lot of chinese immigrants and russians jews in there.
The difference between two people because of their geographical distance is as great as the difference because of their race.
MIT's big advantages have to stem from it being a less intense version of CalTech WRT math and physics. It simply can't afford to admit anyone who can't do the work (and there's a lot of self-selection in the applicant pool), doesn't do much with legacies (once again, they have to be able to do the work) and doesn't take many students from "fancy prep schools". So it's got lots of room for these students who are heavily discriminated against by the other elite schools in the nation.
And for science, at least, CalTech and MIT really have to make a big difference for those students. Everything in those fields depends on professor recommendations (getting into a good grad school and what you do after getting your Ph.D. and postdoc(s)). No matter how good you are, if your recommendations are from professors the targets have never heard of, you're ... not in a good posture.
>Asians, unlike blacks and Hispanics, receive no boost in admissions.
Just not true.
>The admissions disadvantage was greatest for those in leadership positions in these activities or those winning honors and awards. "Being an officer or winning awards" for such career-oriented activities as junior ROTC, 4-H, or Future Farmers of America, say Espenshade and Radford..."
SHOCK! Blue collar "career oriented" awards don't count for institutions who primarily push people into white collar organizations?
This reads like it was written in 1992.
I dont see why things like this always come up. That there is preference exhibited during admissions is fact. It is by design. The real question is if these practices have the desired effect on society.