Affirmative Action

IceQube · December 24, 2011, 11:57am

By “they” I’ll assume that your Gov. teacher meant the URMs.

One conclusive way to tell if a person of a minority group has had a harder life than others is by looking at his or her income bracket. Generalizations like the one your Gov. teacher make are baseless.

Wildcat2016 · December 24, 2011, 12:04pm

Exactly. So basically it is assumed URMs have a lower income bracket. However, my “URM” friends have an AMAZING life and have a low income bracket FOR that reason. It’s pretty BS to be honest. It’s unconstitutional. They can “consider it” but when stats are-

Same School
1 Girl-
Black, 25 ACT, ranked LOWER top 5% (not sure where), and just a KC club treasurer

2 Girl-
White, 29 ACT, ranked top 1%, same KC club president, varsity sports, City Scholar, got into a prestigious summer program at the very school, etc. etc.

Could the essays REALLY make that much of a difference. Puh-lease.

This isn’t “considering it” it’s blatantly having lower standards based on just the COLOR/pigmentation of your skin.

Ridiculous.

Wildcat2016 · December 24, 2011, 12:07pm

BTW: Gov teacher was playing Devil’s Advocate (for both sides). He would never tell us how he really feels… about anything.

PoliticalProtege · December 24, 2011, 12:15pm

Racial AA is a sad reality, but it’s not “lower standards”. I’ve never seen that. A family friend of mine who did admissions for UPenn said that AA made the difference only among qualified applicants. A qualified URM does have a better chance than a qualified Asian. But the word is qualified.

Wildcat2016 · December 24, 2011, 12:21pm

But the school I’m talking about is among the “best”. I know, I got in ED. No one white got in ED from my school (who were all more-qualified than the rest).

HarryJones · December 24, 2011, 12:47pm

Lawl, at most LACs, white MALES or males in general benefit from AA.

Also, tired, old topic is tired and old.

LaChicaBuena · December 24, 2011, 1:40pm

Threads remotely relating to Affirmative Action in HSL:

Withnail · December 24, 2011, 1:58pm

Without some form of affirmative action, white people and asians would dominate admissions. This is a problem, in more ways than one. Now, middle class blacks and African immigrants unduly benefit from a system designed to help the less advantaged: people who have been forced into the social and economic gutter for hundreds of years. These people need help, and helping them will help society in the long run. There’s also the fact that in counter-acts racism, which, while the “discriminated” majorities may not believe it, still exists. The system isn’t perfect, but I only think it would be at Hogwarts.

And when bringing up politicians against AA to make a point, it might be a good idea not to mention people who are racist.

maryvmcculloch · December 24, 2011, 2:11pm

This is America, where we are taught to support democracy and capitalism. This is a country that should be promoting equal opportunity.

But this is NOT equal opportunity, when I get our local scholarship bulletin and can only apply to 1 of 30 available scholarships because the rest go to URMs.
It’s not equal opportunity when every year, every single black kid wins a scholarship even when they have 2.0 GPAs and half of them go and skip class to smoke…

Equal results…that’s more communist than anything else. What is the point; political correctness? This is more PI than PC in my mind.

I don’t understand AA. People say that if we don’t give preference to the URMs, whites and Asians will dominate the workforce.
Okay. So? Shouldn’t it be that the most capable and the best educated get the jobs? If people don’t have to try, they won’t.

AA isn’t even consistent. I’m beat all the time by Asians in piano competitions. Because they’re better than me, it’s fair, and I won’t complain.

On a lighter note, if AA continues, I want to see some sort of compensation for redheads…the only legal racism. ):

LaChicaBuena · December 24, 2011, 2:23pm

[Let</a> me google that for you](<a href=“http://lmgtfy.com/?q=scholarships+for+red+heads]Let”>http://lmgtfy.com/?q=scholarships+for+red+heads)

maryvmcculloch · December 24, 2011, 2:31pm

…hmm. Well, I still disagree with AA. I meant that more as a joke.

Withnail · December 24, 2011, 3:09pm

Take a look at the past 300 years of history and then complain about “equal opportunity”, okay?

dfree124 · December 24, 2011, 3:16pm

^^ Two wrongs don’t make a right. And according to your theory, I should get some sort of compensation because I’m Jewish. Jews have been persecuted throughout history, so can I have an advantage in admissions too?

IceQube · December 24, 2011, 4:10pm

One argument for AA is that it promotes diversity. AA boosts URMs into prestigious colleges to better simulate the global workplace.

Diversity is good, but the unintended consequences of AA, such as a very high URM failure rate in those prestigious colleges, are bad.

Exactly. Every minority group in America has been shafted at one point in its history, and are still being shafted by the white majority. Need evidence? Think:

1) LGBT (Santorum)
2) Chinese (Chinese Exclusion Act)
3) Blacks (slavery)

The problem is that AA isn’t anointing the sin of the Chinese Exclusion Act, under which Chinese people were completely barred from coming into the United States from 1882 to 1943. Is that not discrimination? Shouldn’t that sin be anointed for, just like the sin of slavery and the Jim Crow South was?

AA is a huge double standard intended to superficially anoint for the cardinal sins of slavery and the Jim Crow South. It looks good for a politician to support it. However, AA is insidious. AA is a cancer. AA doesn’t help the majority of URMs achieve anything; in facts, by squirreling URMs away into elite colleges, you are putting them at risk of complete failure.

THE_HAIRY_LEMON · December 24, 2011, 4:35pm

<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1228264-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-9-a.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1228264-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-9-a.html</a>

Excavalier · December 24, 2011, 4:41pm

guys IT’S OBAMA’S FAULT OMGOMGOMGOMG

IceQube · December 24, 2011, 4:42pm

</a>

Let me summarize that unnecessarily wordy and verbose thread for you:

1) You are not required to bubble in your ethnicity, and lots of people do not bubble their ethnicities, as a matter of fact.

2) Colleges are bound by law not to make inferences regarding one’s ethnicity from his or her name. Translation: Colleges make inferences regarding your ethnicity based on your name.

3) You can bubble whatever ethnicity you want, but remember that you should be able to back it up. Translation: if your name does not give away your ethnicity, bubble “black” or “Hispanic” for better chances.

CrazyPluto · December 24, 2011, 4:55pm

I find myself in agreement with basically every one of IceQube’s posts. +1n (n being the # of posts IceQube has made lol)

IceQube · December 24, 2011, 4:56pm

What’s Obama’s fault? Obama can be blamed for staying hush on the issue of AA, but other than that, I admire Obama.

AA may have been the reason why he got into Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard. But in Obama’s case, AA worked, and Obama graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. That means he graduated in the top 10% of his class at Harvard. Obama was also chosen as editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Obama is the model URM. He likely benefited from AA and worked hard in college and transcended the odds and kicked 90% of his Harvard classmates to the curb and graduated in the top 10% of his class.

Now, on the other hand, you look at some blustering fool like Herman Cain, who somehow made it through childhood, college, and got promoted multiple times by a company (likely due to AA) and wound up as a CEO of a pizza joint. And then he decides to run for President, and he appeals to an anti-intellectual base. See Exhibit A:

1) *“Uzbecki-becki-becki-stan-stan”<a href=“Nice%20neologism!”>/i</a>
2) *“We need a leader, not a reader”<a href=“Are%20those%20two%20mutually%20exclusive?”>/i</a>
3) “Libya … uhh …”
4) The Constitution vs. The Declaration of Independence:

Herman Cain is the unfortunate byproduct of affirmative action. He landed in college thanks to AA. He was promoted by Pillsbury to CEO of Godfather’s Pizza to promote corporate diversity (AA at work). Now, with his inflated ego, he thought he could run for POTUS.

So, in my model US, there would be no AA, and Herman Cain would never rise through the ranks of Pillsbury. Instead, may a more qualified individual than Herman Cain win!

almost_there_1 · December 24, 2011, 5:21pm

Is Obama really the type of URM AA was intended for? Affirmative action is generally supposed to benefit low income under-privileged minorities. Obama was half white and grew up with his white parent and white grandparents, his mother had both a masters and a PhD, his father had a masters degree from Harvard and before he was forced out was finishing his PhD there, and he was raised in an upper-middle class home.

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