Colleges rescinding admissions offers as racist social media posts emerge
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It is the responsibility of parents, teachers, adults and mentors to guide children away from mistakes towards the ability to make healthier choices.
Children also learn from their environment. Many of my college friends had never had anything spicy beyond a hint of black pepper due to their upbringing. Some thought spicy food was foul, unpleasant and foreign. It took them a few times visiting Indian, Caribbean, Thai, and Korean places to get hooked and completely change their world view.
We shouldn't mark kids as racist. Everyone has the capacity to grow and learn. Children especially so.
The question really is what is redeemable vs what is not? You can decide for yourself. What instantly disqualifies a child vs what does not?
IMHO, educational institutions at all levels should be more generous and more forgiving because they are in the business of producing educated healthy adults.
If anything, we should focus more resources towards kids that are saying racist things. They are still kids. We can show them a better way.
Forgiveness is divine.
Online posts unfortunately do not disappear. So an 18 year old has to answer for his dumb 16 year old self. This is awful and makes me sad.
A wise primary school teacher told me that over his decades of experience he learned that many kids experiment with things that make them feel strong and powerful. He observed that they often had little to no understanding of what they were doing until they were guided. So a child using racist language may not be a racist, as much as he is trying on the power of a racist. It is the power that thrills him.
These are children. They can learn. The "racist" ones are exactly the ones that we should reach and teach.
- People who have done incredibly positive things for their family, town, state/province, country, humanity
- People who have said, not done but only said, things that they probably shouldn't have
is much bigger than most people would like to admit.
Once you factor in that modern research has established that a young person's brain isn't fully developed till they are 25, we should, as a society, really consider what kind of trade offs we should make around actions of teenagers. Especially so when most of the people making these decisions would most likely not pass their own current criteria.
Racist speech and actions are harmful and hurtful, and preventing people who have demonstrated such extreme disregard for others from attending a college serves to protect people attending and working at the school. There is a legal, and I would argue a moral, obligation that schools have to prevent racial harassment of their students and staff. There's also their own reputation to consider.
I wish people here were more sensitive and sympathetic to the folks who are genuinely hurting, and less worried about the loss of privilege that people face for their own bad choices.
Black people see family members, friends and members of their community denigrated, insulted, harassed, oppressed and even killed by racists and racist systems. Having Black people I'm close to in my life, I can honestly say that many White people have no concept of how horrible things are, and quite a lot don't want to know.
One thing I've always appreciated about my fellow hackers is a sense of fairness, an ideal of justice, a desire for truth and a willingness to face criticism and learn from mistakes. We need to be fair to the people who haven't done anything wrong except be born with the wrong skin tone.
Can someone say this to my friends? They tend to see it as a right.
"Look at all my achievements that I worked so hard for. I must be admitted."
What makes you think people aren't? Disagreement on the virtues of Universities using a political hot button issue as a means to discriminate doesn't mean people aren't sympathetic. At most it means there's are differences in prioritization of what should come before what in regards to how the "System" operates.
>...and less worried about the loss of privilege that people face for their own bad choices.
Now who's being unsympathetic? And for that matter, wasn't it the Left who have been pounding the "higher education is a right" the last few years?
This is what bugs me about this shift to the use of social media mob tactics, and the undying record created by freezing in time every detail of everyone's life via private social media companies.
Instead of a People united in the understanding we all screw up, and change over time, always trying to better ourselves day after day, we've turned the social media presence of a person into the ultimate scapegoat and tool of prejudicial dismissal. The very thing that the Liberal movement of my youth was dead set against. You didn't judge someone by what they'd done, but by how they'd changed, and the changes they're trying to realize.
Furthermore, the purpose of a University is not to provide a safe space for the academic elite. It is an intellectual battleground, upon which the very foundations of human thought are broken down, relaid, and broken down again on a day to day basis. It is where the hard, but necessary questions are asked and answered. It is a place where the very fibers of a human being can be ripped asunder and rebuilt through the gaining of new perspective and through learning the art of transformational learning, research, and rhetorical communication. If you cannot see why it is not in a University's best interest to turn away sharp, inquisitive minds of any shape, and to not feel pause at the weaponizatiom of admission into an institution of higher learning as some sort of political virtue signaling mechanism, then I don't know what to say to you other than I'm disappointed you feel that the sacred mission of a University to sharpen, redirect, and hone young minds is unimportant enough to be wielded as little more than as some sort of brand.
>We need to be fair to the people who haven't done anything wrong except be born with the wrong skin tone.
The poster opines on other's racism, as he makes a value judgement on the basis of life with a particular skin tone. There is no wrong skin tone, just other people more than willing to tell you there is one. If I had any advice to anyone reading this, it is to ignore such people. To listen, and give weight to it is to even acknowledge that such a state of affairs has legitimacy through the sheer populations of other people that indulge in it. Grit your teeth and push on through. You'll come out the other side that much stronger for having done it on your own, and will never have to entertain a second thought that anything you earned was unjustly given.
So race is the safe space right now. What next? Shall we deny admissions to anyone who used the term “bitches”?
Since we’re denying for racism, will we be denying admission to any minorities who post hateful comments about whites? Racism is racism. What if those whites are Jews? Are they protected then? What if they’re Christian? Immigrants from persecution? But you can’t tell that by the color of the person’s skin. All most people will see is “white” or worse “white patriarchy”. If they’ve had direct family members killed, does that give them enough suffering points to compete with historical injustices?
What if they are already attending classes? Do we expel them? Now we have restricted speech on campus, campuses where liberals frequently shout down ideas they don’t like at non-mandatory events instead of simply not attending. If we don’t expel them we’re sending the message that punishment for social transgressions as a minor are more severe than as an adult. That an institution will punish you more for an unwritten or at least unadvertised rule than later, when they have the opportunity to make it super clear.
Unless this is only exercised in the most extreme cases, it’s nothing more than pandering to the current movements because you’re selecting those who are ignorant enough to post stupid shit online.
Don’t get me wrong, some people are incredibly stupid in their conclusions (often from selection bias) and their actions (posting said conclusion on FB), but since I doubt it will applied equally, I’m not a believer.
All kinds of people hurt for different reasons. Why is everyone’s responsibility to be concerned about other people’s hurt?
I’m a minority and immigrant. My birth country has gone through such massive amounts of murders and fairly recent genocide I doubt most Americans can even contemplate such numbers. I see racial slurs against where I’m from and the people don’t even know it’s a slur, that’s how common it is.
Is it everyone’s responsibility to be aware of my feelings? No. Funny thing, if I’m insulted because of a lie related to my birth country, I’m a minority and have the right to be angry. If I’m insulted because of a lie related to me being a guy, it’s male fragility. Gatekeeping at its best.
My middle/high school years spanned the decline of MySpace and the rise of Facebook. Plenty of kids got wrist-slaps for having things like pot leaf gifs on their MySpace pages, and by the time we were nearing the end of high school most people understood that the things you publicly say online don't disappear.
Colleges even warned us about it in admission seminars: "be careful what pictures and statements you put online, because we'll be watching..."
That was a decade ago, but I guess high-quality video cameras are in everyone's pockets these days. At the time, most kids seemed to see it as just another selection criteria: "can you avoid sticking your foot in your own mouth so badly that it could get you fired from the sort of job that you hope to hold one day?"
It might be harder when you're a teenager and every word you say ends up on Snapchat/TikTok/Instagram, but this is nothing new.
There's a difference between intention and ignorance. If kids are getting on social media at 9 or 10 years old now (which is not like it's difficult given I see kids with smartphones around 9 years old), then there is a considerably high chance a 9 to 18 year old is going to do something that will look stupid when they are older.
10 - 14 year olds are like the prime example of "knowing just enough to be dangerous to themselves and others". There's got to be 11 year olds out there that just learned about all the swear words and bad words and think "wow, I need to use these".
Now, all of that exists forever on the internet in indelible ink to come back to bite them in the ass as they grow up and become more learned (and hopefully wiser).
If someone truly grasps what they are doing with full intention, that qualifies for a rejection. However, I think it would be hard to separate "this person was just a dumbass at the time" from "this person means what they said" at an age when solving 3x=6 was considered 'smart'.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3883053/
(A part of me wonders how sensitive these alerts are to dogwhistles. For example, if someone expressed a desire to see more stable two-parent families, will that be seen as playing into nasty racist stereotypes? How about if someone castigated a place for not being diverse enough?)
Sending them back to their childhood bedroom and shitty hometown retail job, notsomuch.
Definitely have to take exception to the first sentence though, since a college literally has a department called the Humanities!
Whether or not they're put in that kind of "leadership position" should be up to them, not anyone else. It's not the responsibility of under-represented groups to educate white people about the history of racial and economic injustice. If we want to learn, the resources exist for us to learn on our own. If we don't want to learn, no amount of prerequisite classes in "Humanities" will motivate us to do so.
True, I'm the one choosing what content to consume, so in that sense I guess you're correct that I'm technically "in charge".
On the other hand, if I limit my choices to content produced by those same groups, then any choice I make is likely to be the right one.
And if I rinse-and-repeat this process, consuming a diverse-enough cross section of said content, I'm well on my way to expanding my worldview.
If they have a racist home life where all their influencers are racist, this is impossible, or close enough to it you can't rely on it happening. Denying them the ability to move on with their lives by "proving" to them that the outside world will always hate them for saying the things they were raised to say is the absolute most perfect way to make sure they never want to change.
>...outside world will always hate them for saying the things they were raised to say is the absolute most perfect way to make sure they never want to change.
This can't be a serious argument...since when was beliefs held as an adult, however grotesque, become 'okay' because it was taught at home? People learn all sorts of screwed up behaviours and beliefs at home, racism being just one among many, it's still up to the individual to be self aware and self improve. And as I mentioned in the previous post, their admission poses a risk to the social cohesion and mental health of all the students at the college, which I think would be unfair.
That isn't what I said. I'd never defend any kind of racist thought, and I'd further never confuse explaining something with defending it. For example, you can explain why a cancer arose without defending the cancer's existence. Similarly with racism: You can explain why people hold racist beliefs without defending any kind of racism whatsoever.
And if someone comes from a dysfunctional home then tough luck. Be born in a better home next time.
Same thing for people who've been arrested for anything violent or threatening. Wouldn't want to be forced to interact with someone with a criminal past. They need to do some soul searching, which can be done from a prison cell.
What you did in high school matters. If you got straight F's you're not getting into Harvard, but using racial slurs w/ a 4.0 should? Just give their seat to the next person who worked just almost as hard as they did. I'm sure there's long lines of people just as deserving (more so probably) waiting to get in, why should their accomplishments not be rewarded also?
I'm sure they can get that out of community college.
Avowed anti-Semite and white supremacist Richard Spencer has a BA from the University of Virginia, a Masters from the University of Chicago, and would have earned a PhD from Duke University if he hadn't dropped out on his own.
Your argument does not hold water.
For starters, how about they prove they've learned the error of their ways? If racist behavior was the grounds for the revocation of their acceptance letter, they can start by demonstrating a track record of remorse for their actions, over a non-trivial amount of time. An appropriately contrite-sounding college entrance essay cranked out over a weekend isn't going to cut it. What sincere attempts have they made to make amends for their racist actions? The students we're discussing have burned bridges through their racist actions, now it's on them to build new ones. Once they've done that, then we'll talk.
> What's next, restaurants refusing patrons for being hungry?
Any time I see the "what's next" argument here on HN or anywhere, it immediately reeks of the "slippery slope" fallacy. Equating racist behavior with "being hungry" is absurd on its face.
> Not only to get some history and some different perspectives, but also to potentially have a brown person as a prof, a roommate or better yet a project teammate...
Expecting racists to do a 180 and become upstanding citizens as the result of "having a brown person as a prof", as if you can catch anti-racism via osmosis, is only slightly less absurd than equating racist behavior with being hungry.
Finally, it's not a 180 someone would be turning. Things are never, if you'll pardon the expression, so black and white. Surprisingly, racists are actually complex human beings with whole lives and shit, not some shallow caricature of pure evil who needs to turn 180° to be "good." Probably I'm some kind of heretic already just for suggesting a racist might not be pure evil, and I reek of, and it smacks of, and the vibe I'm getting is. But yeah I'll bet it's more like a 10° turn in most cases. And it's a turn of a vessel that, at age 18, really doesn't have much weight or momentum to it either. And yes I firmly believe exposure to the people they're biased against is one of the few things that will change them or make them see that racism makes no sense. Call it osmosis if you like; it's how humans learn from each other. Shrieking & judging just makes them hate you along with whomever they already hate. I've certainly done enough of that myself, though on other causes, but with predictably bad results. I still like the "prove you've reformed" thing though.
https://criminal.findlaw.com/expungement/expungement-basics....
But seriously, that’s why social networks like Snapchat took off. Not leaving a permanent trail online is very valuable especially to young people who are still making stupid mistakes for the first time. I certainly said a lot of stupid stuff in my youth that I am glad is not on my “permanent record”.
The implication with "thoughtcrime" is that the state is using its monopoly on violence to punish you for thinking the wrong way. I don't see how that's anywhere close to people refusing to associate with you based on your beliefs. eg. a die-hard libertarian getting kicked out of the campus communist association.
Seventy years ago universities had very different views. If they had had an effective way of screening out students whose views they considered dangerous or harmful, then perhaps we would have a worse society than we do now.
These are powers that make me uneasy.
But more generally, these are just object lessons in poor OPSEC. In particular, the failure to adequately compartmentalize casual social media activity and professional life.
As much as the college has the right to revoke their invitation and nobody is entitled to acceptance, there needs to be a much deeper discussion about how to engage with people instead of shunning them for any transgression, especially ones defined in the future in retrospect.
The reason we have shitty cops is because precincts and unions ENABLE them. If we enable these kids to keep doing what they do without consequence then they will keep pushing the envelope of what is acceptable until they are a horrible human being and either a felon or a lawyer/politician/cop.
Aside from that college admissions is a very long process w/ tons of essays, etc and character evaluation is the whole reason, the words you say when nobody's looking can have huge impact on your 'character assessment' so best to not say it or be damn sure nobody's recording.
There's a difference between reckless speech when young and vile criminal actions. I already said that admittance can be revoked but it's the standard of character and the filter of morality that I'm questioning.
I don't see how this solves anything when you're taking a few posts that apparently now overrule the entire admissions process which you said was for determining character. So what's the point of the process then? Was it inaccurate? What about when the definition of offensive changes in 6 months? What about those who have no social media but are truly bad?
I'm afraid all I see is the overreaction to a political climate and, at best, trying to treat a symptom than actually approaching anything representing real issues.
Had these kids been kicked to the curb and shunned early in life who became cops maybe they'd still be in shitty dead-end jobs, and not killing people and getting paid for it. So yeah, it does matter what you say on social media when you're 17.
Otherwise, lets completely end the whole application process why do grades matter, or accomplishments in school? Because they seem to think character matters.
I'm not saying there is as I don't have statistics backing it up, but it seems highly likely if you did a study of rapists and home abuser overlay that on top of racists you'd have a venn diagram w/ some major overlap.
But the fact of the matter is, why risk a kid coming to school being racist and disenfranchising other students, when there's 10 others of similar merit on the waiting list? They could maybe be less 'vocal' about it, so maybe it's not all over the news and really ruin records, but they can say 'sorry we decided to go a different direction'.
You entire argument relies on these kids already being hardcore racists instead of being misjudged reckless teenagers. If they smoke weed when young, are they hardcore drug abusers too? Would you say the same about kids in very rural or urban inner city areas that are predisposed to certain perspectives? Should they be doomed because they had no other exposure?
College admissions already has an intensive character test. Why do these posts overrule that test? Regardless of admissions, you're losing all nuance and expecting people to be perfect from day 0. Such people don't exist, and all you'll end up doing is creating more hate, divisiveness and letting in people who hide themselves better.
I guess your bar for perfection is super low, mine is not being a racist/nazi/white supremacist. I mean, I thought that was pretty low, that should just be common sense at this point, it's 2020, I honestly thought we'd grown out of this by now. Nothing has changed since 1960, not a damn thing.
But then again if you think things haven't gotten better since 1960 then I'm not sure what there is to discuss. I'd tell you to lookup something called the Obama presidency but I'm afraid that wouldn't cut it against your ever-shifting sense of moral superiority.
Many arguments against affirmative action are based on the idea that we should judge people on their merits. And I'd agree with that- we absolutely should. The problem is that this is neither current practice, nor historical practice, nor even achievable, at least in American society. It's been demonstrated that CVs from people with ethnic-sounding names are binned to a greater extent than people with white-sounding names in job hirings, admission decisions, etc.
There's a non-trivial difference between someone who loses out on a college admissions decision because of affirmative action, vs. someone who has been systematically subject to racist policies at a micro and macro level all their lives.
We should only judge people on merits. Even if it's not perfect today, we should progress towards it through better procedures, training and evolution; not regress backwards into more racial-based policies. And it's definitely achievable, just like plenty of non-white minorities have achieved the highest posts in every level of society, including the presidency.
You will never solve racial issues by introducing more dependence on race. As a foreign-born immigrant minority who is now a proud US citizen, I don't need or want your racial affirmative action. I'm fine letting my work and actions speak for themselves.
> TERF ideology was fine just a few years ago
> who knows what will become the new taboo
I'd like to understand the point you're trying to make in greater detail. Do you object to anti-TERF ideology in particular, or evolving cultural standards in general?
The promise made in the late 90s was that the gays wanted a live and let live policy. What they did in their home life shouldn’t matter to anyone. If someone want to take issue with their life style, they could as long as the gays’ day to day rights were respected. The truce seems to be broken. There are those within the LGBTQ+ community that are seeking retribution. They are seeking to establish their own courts in the public discourse to revile those who took their forefathers to legal ones.
Ultimately this is going to end with the left eating itself. Their hypocrisy will run smooth after awhile. In the meantime there will be many hearts removed on the alter of their cause.
To the question below about canceling over intolerance, I see little benefit in that since the things which we are to tolerate keep moving as do those which we should abhor. Kevin Hart lost the opportunity to host an awards show because of some old jokes. Golden Girls had an episode removed because they wore mud masks. There was a fight at the BBC over a Faulty Towers episode with the N-word. Heck John Cleese is in self imposed exile because of the thought police in England.
To destroy a young man or woman’s future because of foolish indiscretions in their teens is unconscionable. That is the way of fostering the next generation of hate. We will continue to live in a truly racist world because of actions like this. To deny the children entry on these grounds is to say they have no value. They will take this with them into life. They will raise their children in the soil of animosity.
When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression. There are those within almost every community who seek extreme aims. It's foolish to judge any community by the behavior of its most extreme members. I certainly don't judge conservatives by the actions of the small minority of the many far-right ideologues whose voices are being amplified by people in power these days. How about judging the LGBTQ+ community by its mainstream goals? Like, for instance, equality?
> To deny the children entry on these grounds is to say they have no value.
How is that the case? Plenty of college applicants are denied entry every year, for a variety of reasons. You've so far failed to prove that denying someone admission on the grounds of their racist conduct is tantamount to saying they have no value, whereas denying them admission on other grounds makes no such equivalency. Maybe tone down the hyperbole a bit.
> They will take this with them into life. They will raise their children in the soil of animosity.
It sounds like you're saying that their plan is to raise their kids to be racists out of spite, because they themselves faced the inconvenience of actual consequences for their own racist behavior at some point in the past. If that's the case, that only bolsters my point that any self-respecting academic institution would be wise to deny admission to a person as petty as that.
> To destroy a young man or woman’s future because of foolish indiscretions in their teens is unconscionable.
Barring someone from admission to a specific university is hardly the same as "destroying their future". Plenty of people have gone on to successful careers and happy lives despite being denied admission to their university of choice.
Having said that, were you equally vocal about the shooting death of Michael Brown? That's an example of an 18-year-old's future being literally taken away, as opposed to figuratively via a denial of admission to a specific university. If you're not at least as outraged by one outcome as you are by the other, I really don't know what else to tell you.
It is. Getting an education at a top tier college? Not so much. There's always university of phoenix.
Especially true considering that some of these people accused of wrongthink might actually be onto something. It's not a good idea to assume that popular views are certainly the correct ones.
A 17 year old can not vote in national elections, can not drive without restrictions, can not enlist in the military, can not drink, and can not marry. Clearly society has decided that they have not finished developing as people.
Yes? Did you leave college with the same beliefs you had when you arrived?
And if a high school kid can't grow out of racist tendencies, what is the point of all the marching and speeches and protesting and educating then? By that logic, not one mind can ever possibly change because racism is hereditary and permanent.
Similarly, having admission rescinded is especially inconvenient for the people involved and will stimulate some of them (and those around them) to question their racist beliefs. If people renounce their racism, I am all for giving them a second chance. But giving racists the privilege of a top-tier education, often at the expense of non-racists who were denied that same privilege, all while the racists are unrepentant? Nope.
Your alternative is to what, eliminate them from the Earth? As if the "racism" has become this permanent quality?
This entire comment thread is extremely spooky to me. There's such a willingness to be mean-spirited in the name of equality it's downright terrifying.
They're teenagers. You want to punish teenagers for comments, and have the consequences follow them for the rest of their lives?
Is that just?