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<p>Hunt puts it nicely. “Holistic” approach is one way to tax some more than others. Next time if someone mentions the lack of “musicality” or “creativity” in certain applicants, ask if a university is willing to code applicants to remove any racial reference and see if they can spot the lack of “musicality” or “creativity” in them.</p>
<p>Yes, colleges are racist to the extent they look at race apart from socio-economic circumstances. When they do that, they actually do nothing to right past social wrongs, rather they create new ones.</p>
<p>I’ve told this story before, but there was a riot of indignation over AA last spring when an African-American girl from D’s high school was accepted to Penn (Wharton). This girl was raised by two professional parents, lives in a large home, and spent her entire academic career in the same nice suburban schools as anyone else who applied from the same high school. However, she was simply average in grades, test scores, EC’s, and had the personality of a wet washcloth. And before anyone says that maybe we don’t know about some extra-special EC’s she might have done outside of school, let me add that her own mother did not consider her Ivy material at all, in contrast to her older brother who WAS Ivy caliber.</p>
<p>So when the news came out that she was accepted to Wharton, many students (including Asian students) had a fit because they knew they were academically and in all other observable ways far better qualified than she was, yet had gotten denied by Penn. In their minds, she got a racial boost that was completely undeserved and unjustified. And lest anyone suggest no one knew her academic record, Penn also considered her to be an at-risk admittee because they sent her to their special summer program along with other lower stat kids.</p>
<p>So is that racism? The kids thought so.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, I’m not so sure, either, why Hispanics are the recipients of affirmative action, but I don’t have personal knowledge about that. Where I grew up in the South, there were hardly any Hispanics. Somebody with more experience can opine about that. It does seem to be an area in which some people who really don’t have much if any personal experience with discrimination get a benefit. Those African immigrants at least tend to have black skin, which still will buy you some substandard treatment some places in this country.</p>
<p>As I’ve tried to suggest, I view this whole thing as a form of social engineering that is, in the big picture, trying to correct sins of the past and build a better society. It can only be done through collective action, just as many other things have to be done collectively. In my opinion, we have an obligation collectively to build a better, more just society, and we all have to pay some costs for that. Those of us who are rich have to pay more. I can understand that some people philosophically don’t agree with this, and there are politicians who will represent that view.</p>
<p>GFG, that example you give is certainly troublesome, but again, it’s not racism. That girl wasn’t given an advantage because somebody at Penn doesn’t like white or Asian kids. It was done, most likely, because Penn needed to take some kids like her in order to get some “critical mass” of black kids in Wharton. It could be, certainly, that Penn is taking kids like her instead of poor black kids because it’s less risky–she might be a so-so student, but she has good home support and is not likely to flunk out or have major problems. But I’ll bet the number of poor black kids from broken homes who have anywhere near the stats to go to Penn is minuscule. So we go back to the dilemma: is it better for Penn to take some kids like this one so it can get up to, say 5%, black kids who can hack it at Penn? I don’t consider this an easy question to answer, but I tend to think it’s worth it.</p>
<p>We are in the Northeast and I’m not that familiar with the UC system. How hard is it to gain oos admission? DD is making her list . . .</p>
<p>Hunt, I really think the best way to effect positive change for URMs is to reform public k-12. It stinks. AA for admission to HYPS is just window dressing and really not getting at the problem.</p>
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Sadly, I think that just about all the approaches that are politically acceptable will just bring incremental improvements. I think AA is part of the answer, but only part of it.</p>
<p>Analyzing AA using a “is this group/individual deserving?” approach, does not work. Justice O’Connor’s rationale, which ignores history and socio-economic status, works.</p>
<p>It has been my experience with college admissions at top schools, that with regards to Hispanic applicants, they do not give much, if any, advantage to those without some socioeconomic component to their application.</p>
<p>You read over and over again on these “chance me” threads that if an applicant just checks the “Hispanic” box they are certain to get in with lower stats. If you look at the results threads you can see that this just is not true at the top Universities.</p>
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<p>That is one of the questions. Maybe the answer is that the SAT discriminates in favor of Asians.</p>
<p>Just to take this back to some of the orginial topics, here’s a thought question for you. We’ve been talking about the admission rates of Asians, whites, and URMs at highly selective schools, but we’ve been talking about overall admission rates–what are the admission rates for these groups among *unhooked *students? Obviously, all the URMs are hooked, so that makes it difficult, but there are a lot of legacies and recruited athletes as well–and I have to think that at present, Asians are significantly underrepresented in both of those groups. Apparently recruited athletes make up over 10% of the incoming class at the Ivies, and legacies make up another sizable chunk. it’s somewhat debatable whether legacies have significantly lower stats than the unhooked pool, but it’s not really debatable for athletes–indeed, there’s a whole structure to make sure that they’re not too much lower. This is an example of a practice that almost certainly has racially disparate impact, but few would think that athletic recruiting, at least, is designed to limit admission of any particular racial group.</p>
<p>I’m sorry but can someone direct me to the posts that demonstrate that Asian candidates are admitted more readily than white ones?</p>
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<p>If you look at the admission rates of Asians to Harvard (17+%) versus Whites (40+%) to Harvard, you will see that if you were born Asian in this country, the chances of you making it to Harvard are hugely greater. </p>
<p>People will say that we should not look at those figures; we should only look at the number who apply vs. the number admitted. I don’t think doing that tells the whole story.</p>
<p>That is one of the questions. Maybe the answer is that the SAT discriminates in favor of Asians. </p>
<p>Is this a joke?</p>
<p>Well, what’s got people concerned is the idea that the rate of Asian acceptance relative to academic qualifications is less than that of whites, and much less than than of URMs. The latter is certainly true, and the former is, in my opinion, not really proven. The fact that Asians are admitted at rates higher than their representation in the population is due, most likely, to higher than average academic qualifications among Asians. The vexed question is whether the admission rate should be even higher if fair criteria were applied. Again, this breaks down into two questions, which I think are quite different: whether whites are being given an advantage in order to prevent schools from having “too many Asians” (something that may or may not be happening), and whether URMs are given slots that would, without consideration of race, be given to white or Asian students (something that certainly is happening, but is controversial).</p>
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<p>Frederick Douglass disagreed, and so do I. We’ve done enough meddling AGAINST blacks. Maybe we really should just leave them be instead of meddle “FOR” them.</p>
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<p>Except these kids aren’t “some” of the 5%; they’re almost all of it. Racial preferences cannot create a black middle class. They serve only to benefit those who are already middle class or higher.</p>
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On this, we just have a difference of opinion. I assume Frederick Douglass was in favor of the emancipation of the slaves?</p>
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<p>Last year, Duke’s student newspaper ran an article titled [Duke</a> draws ‘rich kids of all colors.’](<a href=“http://dukechronicle.com/article/duke-draws-rich-kids-all-colors]Duke”>Duke draws ‘rich kids of all colors’ - The Chronicle) In 2006, Latino students at Duke reported average family incomes of $170,980, which exceeded the average family incomes of Asians ($153,401).</p>
<p>Is Duke an outlier among top schools?</p>
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<p>He was an abolitionist.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s time for colleges to lump Asians and Whites together in the admission process. In other words, check this box if you are Asian or White of European descent. This would still allow Colleges to enroll URMs to keep their classes diverse.</p>
<p>Discrimination against Latinos definitely existed. My husband remembers being turned away from a motel because they were Mex-Am. I cried when I read what was written by kids in his high school yearbook from the private school he had a scholarship to. I’ve had people express surprise to me that he is college educated. One person even said they didn’t think Mex-Americans went to college! My brother in law found a house to buy but the seller didn’t want to sell to Mex-Americans. His family has been in the USA for about 100 years.</p>
<p>If you are interested in learning more about the history of the Mex-Am civil rights movement against Jim Crow style repression
:
[WGBH</a> American Experience . A Class Apart . Introduction | PBS](<a href=“http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/introduction/class-introduction/]WGBH”>http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/introduction/class-introduction/)
"AMERICAN EXPERIENCE presents A Class Apart from the award-winning producers Carlos Sandoval (Farmingville), and Peter Miller (Sacco and Vanzetti, The Internationale). The one-hour film dramatically interweaves the story of its central characters activists and lawyers, returning veterans and ordinary citizens, murderer, and victim within the broader story of a civil rights movement that is still very much alive today.</p>
<p>The film begins with the little known history of Mexican Americans in the United States. In 1848, the Mexican-American War came to an end. For the United States, the victory meant ownership of large swaths of Mexican territory. The tens of thousands of residents living on the newly annexed land were offered American citizenship as part of the treaty to end the war. But as time evolved it soon became apparent that legal citizenship for Mexican Americans was one thing, equal treatment would be quite another…</p>
<p>Widespread discrimination followed Latinos from schoolhouses and restaurants to courthouses and even to funeral parlors, many of which refused to prepare Mexican American bodies for burial. During World War II, more than 300,000 Mexican Americans served their country expecting to return home with the full citizenship rights they deserved. Instead, the returning veterans, many of them decorated war heroes, came back to face the same injustices they had experienced all their lives.</p>
<p>Latino lawyers and activists were making progress at state levels, but they knew that real change could only be achieved if Mexican Americans were recognized by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution something that could only be accomplished by bringing a case to the Supreme Court."</p>
<p>and
[Justice</a> for My People: The Dr. Hector P. Garcia Story | PBS](<a href=“http://www.pbs.org/justiceformypeople/]Justice”>http://www.pbs.org/justiceformypeople/)
"…Dr. Garcia’s achievements are of historical importance. Through peaceful protest and legal recourse, he confronted the violators of the civil rights of “his people” at the same time that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. worked for equal rights for African Americans.</p>
<p>Returning to Texas after World War II with six battle stars, Garcia found that while Mexican American veterans had been changed by the war, prejudiced America had not. His people faced public school segregation, squalid living conditions in labor camps, and second-class citizenship. In 1948, Dr. Garcia founded the American GI Forum, empowering Mexican Americans to fight numerous legal and political battles against discrimination…</p>
<p>…Gradually, his efforts paid off. The end of the 1950s saw Texas movies, restaurants and hotels desegregated. By the 1960s, barbershops and beauty parlors were also open to Mexican Americans. However, he did not slacken his pace, for it was not until the 1970s that cemeteries and swimming pools were also desegregated…"</p>
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<p>By this logic, there was no discrimination against Jews at Harvard in the 1930s. They made up 15% of the student body but nowhere near 15% of the U.S. population.</p>
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<p>Yes, it somehow discriminates in favor of Asians even though by and large, they didn’t write the test.</p>
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<p>I know we’ve gone round and round on this before, TheGFG, but a community / neighborhood in which people “have a fit” over where other students get in – as opposed to wishing them well and focusing on their OWN lives and where they are headed – sounds like an absolute nightmare. It sounds like a big fat cluster-you-know-what of nosy nellies. And parents who perpetuate this, chime on in the situation, and don’t counsel the kids “mind your own business, stop second-guessing other people, let’s focus on your life” aren’t any better. (Not saying that you are guilty of this at all.)</p>