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<p>Very accurate statement, Duper. This theory, while racist, has been proven right by many observations.</p>
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<p>In response to Duper, that’s a very stupid, ignorant, and racist comment. If you don’t know what to say and are not knowledgeable about a subject, I think it’s best to keep your mouth shut to avoid looking stupid.</p>
<p>To rabbelrouser, I believe your statement is wrong about all African-Americans getting a boost just because of their race. If you look at many schools, especially selective schools, you see that the percentage of African-Americans there are lower than 10%. Hmmm…maybe it’s just me but less than 10% doesn’t sound like a big “boost” to me. Also, when it all boils down, no matter the race, a college isn’t going to admit a student who doesn’t have decent SAT scores, GPA, or ECs, no matter what race and no matter how much diversity they want. Also, my question, is why are you only saying African-Americans get a boost? If you are talking about Affirmative Action, then don’t Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, etc. also get as much as a boost of African-Americans?</p>
<p>and women, sb. </p>
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<p>and by the way, what the heck is with all of the racist and sexist twits on this website!!!</p>
<p>I was a reading tutor in a Title 1 school. Tutored K, 1st and 2nd graders in reading for a semester.</p>
<p>this researcher is absolutely correct. </p>
<p>I bribed one black 2nd grader to read at home, one piece of his favorite candy per ‘book’ on his reading level. He wants to be a football coach someday. I think that boy had the markings of being intellectually gifted, but his reading was holding him back. But his college educated mom who lived in a trailer with her 3 sons, all with different fathers, preferred to watch racy tv shows in the living room, and his brother watched scary movies after school IN THEIR BEDROOM THAT THE 2 BOYS SHARED. So my student had to read in the hallway.</p>
<p>I didn’t notice any improvement in his fluency after 3 months. My experiment didn’t work because I couldnt’ get family support for it.</p>
<p>I saw black kids whose parents didn’t value education, and so the kids, even in K, didn’t really want to exert any effort.</p>
<p>I recall telling one well-dressed black mom with a 4 yr old in the shopping cart that she could teach her son to read now. She looked at me like I was crazy, and said the school would do it. She said her 7 yr old had a tv in his bedroom, and was affronted that I suggested that might negatively affect his reading for fun and subsequent reading comprehension.</p>
<p>Black families like to point to schools and blame the schools, when in fact it is their lack of encouraging their children to read at home that is keeping these kids back. Also, what isn’t known and I had this insight halfway thru the semester is that college is being decided by the end of first grade. if you fall in love with reading by that time, you will do it at home and enjoy it. If not, you will always struggle with reading and this will definitely hold you back. You don’t get enough reading practice by reading at home,and this will clearly negatively impact your reading comprehension skill.</p>
<p>Reading is like skating, the more you practice by reading AT HOME (there isn’t enough time at school) the better you get at it. If you don’t practice, you cannot expect to improve to the point that you can compete for admission to a fairly good college.</p>
<p>You know, checking books out of libraries is free. There is no excuse for kids not reading at home. It’s just not valued by way too many black parents</p>
<p>“you are talking about Affirmative Action, then don’t Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, etc. also get as much as a boost of African-Americans”</p>
<p>If you think that Asians get a boost, that just shows how little you know about AA.</p>
<p>Asians are disadvantaged by AA because they are overrepresented in the applicant pool. Colleges can’t allow their student populations to be 80% Asian. Native Americans get the biggest boost, since they are the least represented of all groups. Hispanics and blacks both get a boost, but I’m not sure if it’s the same for both.</p>
<p>There is statistical evidence. See below, I attached an excerpt from a book review from a book by Bowen and Bok, the former presidents of Princeton and Harvard. </p>
<p>"Race Sensitive Policies in Admissions a Thirty Year Study. "</p>
<p>"Arguments over the import of race sensitive polices in college admissions have long been based on anecdotal accounts, specifically because little statistical evidence on the effects of race sensitive policies existed. The Shape of the River by William G. Bowen and Derek Bok details the first attempt to objectively assess the consequences of race sensitive policies using statistical evidence. In the book, William G. Bowen, former president of Princeton University, and Derek Bok, former president of Harvard, examine the College and Beyond database, a catalog of information on more than 80,000 undergraduates who enrolled at 28 selective colleges and universities in 1951, 1976 and 1989. "</p>
<p>stats in their book shows the percentage of African American’s in schools with SAT’s higher than 1300 would go from Approximately 8% down to approximately 2%, IF THERE WAS NO AFFIRMATIVE ACTION. </p>
<p>Schools with SAT’s from 1150 to 1299 would go from approx. 6% to 3% with race blind admissions. </p>
<p>Schools with SAT’s lower than 1150 would go from approx 7% to 4.5%. with race blind admissions. </p>
<p>There are lots of other statistics as well. </p>
<p>Just do a search for yourself</p>
<p>Only “under represented” minorities get a boost. </p>
<p>Asians do NOT get a boost. </p>
<p>Some say they suffer from being “over represented” in good schools. </p>
<p>Hispanics and American Indians both get a boost as do African Americans.</p>
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<p>Some people will use any excuse to feel superior. </p>
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<p>In any case, I’m wondering why the attention is on Hispanics and African Americans in relation to AA when Native Americans receive higher consideration than either of the aforementioned.</p>
<p>^The focus is on Hispanics and African-Americans because there’s more of them that benefit from AA. Native Americans make up a much smaller segment of the population than either of the aforementioned groups. (According to Wikipedia, 0.68% of the U.S. population is Native American, while 13.4% is African-American and 14.8% is Hispanic.) Any Native American applicant would get a significant AA boost, but my guess is there’s just not enough Native American applicants to top schools to seriously impact admissions.</p>
<p>Without affirmative action and with a true numbers-based meritocracy, elite colleges would have at least 50% Asian student bodies. The only ones that wouldn’t would be ones that are blackballed by Asian parents for not being “name” enough. </p>
<p>Are anti-AA’ers willing to accept this reality? Or are they actually trying to scrap AA while maintaining a subjective admissions critera (based on bogus and potentially racist categories like “character”?) that ensures that America’s top colleges will keep looking like an episode from The OC or Gossip Girl?</p>
<p>In the long term under represented minorities would benefit most of all from ending AA.</p>
<p>You ask how?</p>
<p>If you read Ogbu’s articles, he says middle and upper middle class African American’s have a culture that discourages good academic performance. </p>
<p>I think its logical for students to “not work hard”. If you know you can get B+'s and still get into a top school why work extra hard? That’s what AA does. </p>
<p>If the crutch of AA went away, I believe that African American and other students who benefit from AA, would adjust by working harder, as do Asian and white students who attend elite colleges. </p>
<p>With all students competing on an even playing field, I see no reason why all students shouldn’t be represented in elite colleges at the same rate as their percentage of the general population. This won’t happen immediately, but I see no reason why it shouldn’t happen. </p>
<p>A “testing culture” fostered by efforts like “no child left behind” has already started to close educational disparities between under represented minorities and whites/Asians. </p>
<p>Ogbu showed that the under represented minorities were “just as smart”, IQ wise. </p>
<p>Ending AA, is the shock to the system needed to help motivate under represented minorities to work hard in school.</p>
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<p>Or it might discourage them entirely and create a general cultural depression. Most African-Americans believe that institutional racism exists and the deck is stacked against them right from birth. This is the kind of belief that fosters the fatalism that exists in some black communities (remember, some blacks didn’t want Obama to run because they feared his assassination). Taking away AA and implicitly calling them freeloaders that society favours instead of discriminating against will do nothing to solve this problem.</p>
<p>Remember that the same percentage of whites in the pre-Civil Rights 1960s believed that blacks were treated fairly as they do today. Quite frankly, I take very little heed in what whites, much less from conservative whites, have to say about what level of supposed equality or advantages they erroneously believe minorities have in America. Geraldine Ferraro and Pat Buchanan, I’m looking squarely at you.</p>
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<p>Southeast Asians are underrepresented, so do they get a boost?</p>
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<p>True.</p>
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<p>False. Affirmative Action/“diversity” has helped me, an American of Asian descent, gain admission to both my extremely selective high school, and my very selective college (12.5% RD, <2% waitlist). I mean, I was very much qualified in both circumstances, but I can’t deny that my race has played a significant role in helping me be where I am today.</p>
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<p>How do you know this?</p>
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<p>Not that there isn’t truth to that belief.</p>
<p>I’d like to add that I doubt most minority students even know what Affirmative Action is. I never did until I came to this site. None of my friends know what it is. People on this site labeled me as a URM and I never knew what it was. </p>
<p>So it’s really a figment of white peoples’ imagination that minorities don’t work hard (as if all minorities are the same…) because of AA.</p>
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I absolutely want a 100% pure meritocracy. No essays. No geographic diversity. No legacies. No athletic recruitment. I want it to be that someone can go to a school and know 100% it’s because they were intellectually capable of being there. Assuming that US universities still wanted American citizens as students, regardless of ethnicity, it would be highly unlikely that “elite” universities would become 50% Asian.</p>
<p>this has confirmed my belief all along. i can finally say this without giving the impression that i am a racist.</p>
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<p>The problem with that reasoning is that you’re assuming African Americans have the drive to get into a “top college” that you see students here on CC have. Not only are most white students not at all like CCers, I’m sure considerably few African Americans are. They don’t have this mapped out life of going to a dream college, and most of them aren’t even intending on going to college. Many people don’t even give it the faintest thought until their senior year when they start thinking about what options exist after high school. Like the poster a few before me mentioned, many of them don’t even know what AA is anyway–I didn’t know I was one until I came to this site and started reading heavily about top colleges I was interested in my senior year (way too late for me to “slack off” because of my crutch for getting into Princeton :)).</p>
<p>Cultural influences play a huge effect on people’s lives that really cannot be ignored, and they’re quite disparate even in just this country.</p>
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