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To Just_Browsing - In America's suburbo-metropolitan regions, you might be correct, but everywhere else, believe me, ignorance and discrimination against Jews and practitioners of non-Christian religions is commonplace. Don't delude yourself.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I'm a Jew myself, you don't need to tell me that anti-semitism exists. I was talking about white privilege. Whether we like it or not, white Jews are still white.</p>
<p>Yeah, and I am a Jew as well, although I am not white. As I understand it, at some level certain groups of whites don't consider Jews as "white" as they are.</p>
<p>People are mixing up race, nationality, and ethnic background again!</p>
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[quote]
Yeah, and I am a Jew as well, although I am not white. As I understand it, at some level certain groups of whites don't consider Jews as "white" as they are.
[/quote]
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<p>True, Jews didn't really become "white" in American society until somewhere in the 1970s, and in some places we still aren't "white" in the full respect of the word. But, for those Jews who do have white skin, unless they choose to mark themselves as Jews (say by wearing a yarmulke or tzitzit), they will still be seen as white by those around them. Race is a lot about how other people identify you, and if people don't know that a white person is Jewish (because you haven't told them presumably), then they will just be "white."</p>
<p>mehr no one answered my question a couple pages back :-/</p>
<p>i understand giving poor kids who didnt have the opportunities due to race/economic situations a break (yes, meaning RELAXING standards a bit) because they didnt have some opportunities that other kids did, but what i dont understand is giving a rich (or economically stable in the middle class) kid who had every opportunity that most other kids had and more a break simply because of the color of his/her skin.</p>
<p>is that, or is that not racist?</p>
<p>^^^^^^
considering that most wealthier URM students are attending high schools that are predominantly white, i think it's safe to say that these students are definitely having different social and psychological experiences in high school than their peers at their high schools are. having this weight on you certainly is going to affect what you do academically. </p>
<p>Fabrizio...
There is certainly a good bunch of educational research out there which addresses the benefits of diversity in higher education. Gordon Winston and colleagues at Williams College have done a lot of work on this - "peer effects" is what he calls the effect of diversity. In addition, the College Board released some great work in 2004 - penned by Emily Shaw - on this subject as well. Methodologically, these studies have quite tight and have been used by some of the most respected educational researchers in the world in their works.</p>
<p>AdOfficer,</p>
<p>Thank you. I'll look into those.</p>
<p>I did a quick read of Gordon Winston' peer effect paper while watching football. His finding seems to be that if an average student has a high SAT roommate, his grade may improve; if he has a low (relative) SAT roommate, his grade may do worse.</p>
<p>So if a conclusion is to be drawn, diversity helps some and hurt some.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.williams.edu/wpehe/DPs/DP-64.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.williams.edu/wpehe/DPs/DP-64.pdf</a></p>
<p>I meant AA helps some and hurts some.</p>
<p>bomgeedad...</p>
<p>You neglected to mention how Winston and his colleagues define "low SAT score"...they were looking at elite colleges like Williams and Dartmouth, where the students with "low" SAT scores were still in the top 85% of test takers nationally. In addition, they conclude that "students in the top of the SAT distribution appear often not to be affected by the SAT scores of their roommates"...read carefully and don't misinterpret the findings to fit your argument. </p>
<p>Additionally, Zimmerman's (the other author) work is cited repeatedly...his work was done with GPA, not SAT. Typically, URM students' GPAs are close - if not identical - to their white counterparts as entering freshmen. The findings from his study are similar. Also, remember that the Winston and Zimmerman study looked at students with different socioeconomic statuses, not just racial differences.</p>
<p>^^^
I was not making an argument, I was making a one sentence summary, of course I cannot cover every detail and citations. I thoguht of adding a sentence about high SAT student, but I was too lazy and thought the word "may" already cover this. If you want to add more detail, fine. BUt Aren't being unfair to say it is an intentional intrepretation.</p>
<p>If the peer effect is considered to be an important argument for using AA to achieve diversity, AA is in big trouble.</p>
<p>"You neglected to mention how Winston and his colleagues define "low SAT score"...they were looking at elite colleges like Williams and Dartmouth, where the students with "low" SAT scores were still in the top 85% of test takers nationally."</p>
<p>I think this is an important point relating even to the general issue of the exaggeration of "low" on CC by many people. What's "low" to many posters is an imperfect score (<2400). A 2200 student with a high GPA at a difficult school & off-campus academic achievements may be seen by a particular college to be "higher" than a 2400 student with a 4.0 from an easier school & nothing scholastically unusual or impressive. (Including from the same race, nationality, ethnicity.)</p>
<p>Afrikaners have lived in Africa since before Whites came to North America. If Afrikaners are not African, then Whites here are not American. The Arabs of North Africa are Africans also.</p>
<p>The confusion seems to come from the change years ago in words used for Black Americans. If the term was still Negro or Black there would be no confusion with Arab or White Africans.</p>
<p>It would be similar if the French university admissions officials used a racial group called "Americans" and then were distressed when Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans all showed up claiming to be Americans.</p>
<p>My belief is simple. The schools mean black because they want to put the picture on their website and in their mailings. Nevertheless to seem politically correct they ask for african-american. I fyour family is from africa, youre african american. The schools should be more specific if they want a black person. Personally, I dont think they should be allowed to ask race at all</p>
<p>I know this is off-topic, but I am responding to a posting in this thread. Any future discussion on this topic from me would be moved to the diversity thread.</p>
<p>Re #150</p>
<p>'"low" SAT scores were still in the top 85% of test takers nationally'</p>
<p>That statement refers to an earlier study by Zimmerman. In the study cited in this paper, there are 3 unnamed schools. The maximum SAT score in each school is 1600. The minimum are 1090, 950 and 880. The average for the bottom 15% SAT groups were not given.</p>
<p>'Additionally, Zimmerman's (the other author) work is cited repeatedly...his work was done with GPA, not SAT.'</p>
<p>Zimmerman's work is cited twice. On page 37, table 11 : recent studies of academic peer effects, both works by Zimmerman use roommate's verbal SAT in bottom 15% as the peer characteristics, not GPA.</p>
<p>'In addition, they conclude that "students in the top of the SAT distribution appear often not to be affected by the SAT scores of their roommates"' </p>
<p>True, they put that statement in the abstract. In their Conclusion and Agenda section, they said “New evidence presented in this chapter adds to our confidence that peer effects exist and that the signs of those effects are in the direction that would motivate institutional selectivity – strong students tend to increase peers’ academic performance and weak students tend to reduce it.” It is not that different from what I wrote. They did not bother to put the fact top SAT scorers are not affected in the conclusion section.</p>
<p>I admit I did not read carefully the first time, I stated that in the post. On hindsight I did not do too bad. It appears that someone else need to read more carefully.</p>
<p>i'm citing Winston's study that was revisited this past year by Gordon and Zimmerman...what is available online at the moment from Williams is the abstract/proposal of what has been presented to the CoFHE schools for funding to write the official study. in addition, these works (the ones available from Williams) merely try to identify the existence of peer effects by finding differences in acheivement amongst different students...these studies don't specifically address the role of race as a peer effect. </p>
<p>the sat realms zimmerman mentions in his study (1999) are the extremes the lower of which is associated with international students' test scores (particularly the verbal score)...</p>
<p>Zimmerman's prior work is used as a principal source for the CoFHE work, but his work has been cited repeatedly in a lot of other educational researchers...I was not suggesting that his work is cited repeatedly in Winston's study which you read/linked...</p>
<p>"If an African elephant comes to America, is he an African-American elephant?" - Opus Sunday comics, Feb 11, 2007.</p>
<p>LALALA06 are you Mier G. lol</p>
<p>Yes, Boers are African, but they are sure as hell not Black, nor are they discriminated against in South Africa (anymore). </p>
<p>Black is a much better term than African-American, because people from Africa, White or Black, do not have the same historical experience as Blacks who descended from SLAVES brought to the Americas by force.</p>
<p>yeah
umm
isnt middle eastern a minority</p>
<p>and</p>
<p>i think "political correctness" is a joke</p>
<p>who are we to call people hispanic americans, asian americans, and african americans?
what if someone who isnt a citizen is called an african american</p>
<p>jsut cause a black guy is in america doesnt mean he's american...though the majority are.</p>