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<p>Wait, why not? </p>
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<p>Good point. I cited Ron Paul since he seems to be the only one with the *caj</p>
<p>Because minorities already tend to vote Democrat anyway, regardless of the stance that candidates take on AA.</p>
<p>Why I think the current version of AA doesn’t work: It places X minority in an environment where they may likely fail. BAR passage rate for blacks was like 55% last year.</p>
<p>Inner-city schools are an issue, but not the sole underlying cause. I believe the most important issue is family, and that goes more to SES background. But you can’t simply replace race with SES, because again, it would be too little, too late.</p>
<p>You need to identify students very early on and improve their educational and social experiences via encouragement. Basically, provide good role models for them, as kids from lower SES backgrounds may not have any. </p>
<p>However, a big question is how do you improve family structure? Habits held by parents, how much the parents involve themselves with the school life of their child, if there is a single parent, fighting, if the parents stress education or not, all have profound effects on the children.</p>
<p>The problems listed above affects Black households much more heavily than Asian ones.</p>
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<p>Still, Republicans are definitely not the standard-bearer for Asians and whites - the two groups hurt by affirmative action. Here are two major presidential candidates’ positions on affirmative action. </p>
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<p>[Mitt</a> Romney on the Issues | Campaign 2008 | washingtonpost.com](<a href=“http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2008-presidential-candidates/issues/candidates/mitt-romney/]Mitt”>http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2008-presidential-candidates/issues/candidates/mitt-romney/)</p>
<p>Newt Gingrich also supported affirmative action in various phases of his career. Gingrich’s position is largely moderated by what’s going to get him elected though. </p>
<p>[JSTOR:</a> An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie](<a href=“http://www.jstor.org/pss/2963204]JSTOR:”>Why Newt Gingrich's Affirmative Action Position Is Moderated by the Threat of Black Voters on JSTOR)</p>
<p>Republicans have not done much about affirmative action either way.</p>
<p>As an urm I can say that I have to try so much harder because I have to prove so many people wrong about my true abilities. Having a lower standard put on you is harder to get over because people expect you to fail and not succeed. I am tired of threads like these and it’s the first time I had the energy to say something about it.</p>
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<p>Affirmative action does have the unintended consequence of devaluing the achievements of URMs. Some people unfortunately stereotype URMs at prestigious schools as being “affirmative action babies.”</p>
<p>The groups national candidates are appealing to vote one way or another irregardless of Affirmative Action. Besides, any person who’s worked in politics (me :D) can tell you that it’s an issue which has nothing to gain from and everything to lose from.</p>
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<p>What exactly is your political background? My background is interested spectator and wannabe player :D. </p>
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<p>I still say there is at least a little to gain from supporting AA in terms of the minority vote - if only a little. </p>
<p>I have to agree with your second point, there is a lot of lose from not supporting AA. Note how Obama barely commented on AA during the 2008 election. If he said no to AA … I doubt there would be a President Obama. If he said yes … that wouldn’t help with his white constituency. Therefore, he chose the smart route of keeping hush on the issue of AA.</p>
<p>Most politicians will keep shut on AA. For every minority voter they’ll win, they’ll lose a white or asian voter.</p>
<p>I’ve worked on a couple campaigns and done some pretty intense stuff, aside from the political clubs that 40% of the academic-based students do. Not bad for a frosh, eh?</p>
<p>IceQube, are you completely going to ignore the fact that affirmative action in private (i.e. not gov’t funded) college admissions has nothing to do with representative politics? Affirmative action in the public sector is a completely different issue that politicians DO have influence over, and that’s what Romney and Gingrich are referring to.</p>
<p>I think URMs who have experienced real discrimination, or real adversity, should be given a preference, because they started the race way behind the starting line that the typical white runner starts from, but I don’t agree that someone should be given preference for the mere fact that they are “hispanic” or “african american”, because a college desires that a certain percentage of each racial group be represented for reasons of “diversity”. </p>
<p>For example, down in Miami, hispanics are not even a minority. And they are sometimes even wealthy.</p>
<p>Should Barak Obama’s or Eric Holder’s kids be given a preference when they apply to college, merely because they are African American? </p>
<p>Nor do I feel comfortable with the discrimination that asians endure in the admissions process. Affirmative action often is applied to their detriment, because they are an “over”-represented group.</p>
<p>Now, on the other hand, I once read that the inconvenient truth is that if colleges went strictly on merit, a school like UC Berkeley would be mostly asian and jewish (even more so than now), and there would be almost no African Americans. Society has determined, rightly or wrongly, that this is an unacceptable outcome.</p>
<p>So in my opinion, the system has basically devolved, in my opinon, into a thinly disguised quota system, where the colleges have a desired racial make-up of their class in mind, and then work backwards to fulfill those quotas. So effectively, many colleges "reserve’ 25% of their spots to preferred minorities (and also, legacies and athletes, which I don’t agree with either)</p>
<p>So no one should be against legitimate affirmative action. The question is where to draw the line.</p>
<p>Words of wisdom right here:</p>
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<p>Racial AA persists at public schools. Fortunately, California and Texas have moved away from racial AA. Still, not all public schools have. And hopefully private schools will move away from racial AA. And legacy AA.</p>
<p>Racial AA is as popular among colleges as socioeconomic AA, if not less.
And no, the current system doesn’t give them preference due to race, it gives them preference due to moola ;).</p>
<p>College admissions should be done by machine, with only the teacher recommendations and essay read by humans.</p>
<p>There should be a bigger focus on helping the disadvantaged get a good education and get into college, not give them preference to get in. There should be more free tutoring (especially SAT/ACT), free college counseling centers for help with essays and such, accessibility to public magnet schools, etc. Level the playing field and give them the same tools that rich kids have to get accepted, and there’s no longer a need to give them preference.</p>
<p>AA doesn’t really benefit minorities, if by benefit we mean it helps more minorities graduate college. at best the data is divided and inconclusive. Because of the mismatching that occurs, where under-qualified applicants get into schools that are too hard for them and end up dropping out, you may actually have less blacks graduating from college than you would have without AA.
[Affirmative</a> action - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“Affirmative action - Wikipedia”>Affirmative action - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>And that obviously means more spots for white people*. We might find the reasoning behind AA flawed, but at least we know it hasn’t even really appeared to do what it intended to do (and that it may have actually achieved the opposite effect.). </p>
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<li>but it doesn’t specify where. So for example it means that there may still be less spots for white people at places like * elite universities * because of AA, even when overall this is not the case.</li>
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<p>Change the question a bit here. Take all those AA admits out. Who do you think would take their place, whites or asians? I’ve always felt there’s a bit of affirmative action for white females, especially from what I’ve seen at school.</p>
<p>I didn’t take the time to read all the responses but I think that colleges should be race-blind but not circumstance-blind. I know they try their best to not assume anything because of someone’s race, but</p>
<p>I didn’t take the time to read all the responses but I think that colleges should be race-blind but not circumstance-blind. I know they try their best to not assume anything because of someone’s race, but admissions officers aren’t perfect. They might unconsciously admit an URM student over an asian or white student, simply by race, even though the asian/white student may have a worse off situation. I think sometimes there’s an admission stereotype that URMs don’t have as much opportunity while asians/white have lots of money and resources, but we know this is obviously not true.</p>
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<p>+1. </p>
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<p>+1.</p>
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<p>Who would take the AA admits’ places? Answer: qualified students of any background.</p>
<p>My Gov teacher basically said, “it can be assumed they had harder lives”. REALLY? it can be? How? We know they didn’t have to try just as hard in HS.</p>