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<p>Understood. I do not believe what you wrote is a straw man. Thank you for the clarification.</p>
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<p>Just to play devil’s advocate though, it sounds as though you’re saying that the default level as to what someone would feel comfortable with is what white people are comfortable with. That is, if <em>white</em> people feel a school is too Asian and / or “foreign” - then it’s too Asian or foreign. You seem to treat yourself as the default. The Asian-Americans in your area – however “exotic” their languages, foods, etc. – are still Americans – yes?</p>
<p>But again, we circle back to …
Is there any difference between a college – which is, after all, a business – making the business decision based on:</p>
<p>A) I want to ensure that I have a critical mass of blacks, Hispanics on my campus, because if there aren’t, my campus will feel too uniform / homogenous and
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- the talented blacks / Hisp I do want to come will be uncomfortable
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- the talented whites I do want to come won’t want to come if they perceive
this place as not offering diversity?</p>
- the talented whites I do want to come won’t want to come if they perceive
<p>B) I want to limit the % / # of my student body that is Asian, because if there are too many Asians around, my campus will feel “foreign” and the talented white students I desire won’t want to come here? (akin to the Jewish / Gentile quotes of the 1930’s) </p>
<p>Because I see A and B as completely different things, and I think Fab sees them as exactly the same.</p>
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<p>Perhaps that is true, but that argument may not be well accepted by members of any minority group, who are more likely to live in situations where their group is a 1% to 30% minority, instead of a 51% to 99% majority.</p>
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<p>However, wouldn’t B be an extension of A1 to white students, except that the “comfort level” for white students appears to be assumed to be much greater than for black and Latino students? I.e. a university may assume that the “critical mass” for black and Latino students to feel comfortable is (for example) 10% each, but that the “critical mass” for white students to feel comfortable is (for example) 51%, but with an upper limit (based on A2) of (for example) 85%?</p>
<p>Really? That argument’s not well accepted by members of *any * minority group? Huh. I don’t see too many Mormons getting bent out of shape that most non-Mormons wouldn’t feel comfortable at BYU. I don’t see too many Catholics getting bent out of shape that non-Catholics may not be interested in Notre Dame or Boston College. I don’t see too many blacks getting bent out of shape that most non-blacks are not interested in Spelman or Morehouse.</p>
<p>I suppose, though, on second thought, maybe the distinction is that BYU, ND and Spelman are <em>intended</em> as institutions to be for Mormons, Catholics and blacks – whereas the colleges we’re talking about aren’t “intended” to be for any one particular group.</p>
<p>UCB: Interesting. I suppose we’re talking in circles at one another, however, because there’s a difference between “critical mass to ensure someone in that group feels comfortable” and “such an overwhelming mass that others not in that group feel uncomfortable.” One is inclusive, the other is exclusive.</p>
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<p>Definitely not in agreement with this. It applies to any subset. Thus, the Ivies stopped wanting their campuses to have that overwhelmingly lily-white-East-Coast-prep-school appearance quite some time ago. They began to be much more interested in racial diversity first of all, then later geographic and income diversity. They don’t want their campuses to be 60% anything (regionally, socioeconomically, ethnically, interest-wise). (Referring to another post of GFG’s.) With the corresponding convergence of the super-achieving echo-boomers, the size of the Echo Boom, the greater willingness of the college age population to be mobile, increasing accessibility to information about college admissions and “elite” universities, significantly greater immigration numbers and global interchange, Institutional Priorities met an entirely new admissions landscape, and that relationship has continued to be in mutual dynamic.</p>
<p>I continue to see how many people, even on CC, still do not quite have a grasp of the size of the highly-qualified pool of applicants and how that allows a college, without compromise to its academic mission, to craft as diverse a campus as they choose, on all levels. They don’t want their campuses to be 60% Southern, Northeastern, low-income, Black, Hispanic, engineering majors, sociology majors, Korean, Californian, boarding school grads, Protestant, Jewish. And they get to have it that way because the world is at their doorstep. It would be a concern if there weren’t 4 times the number of qualified applicants as there were available spots.</p>
<p>Yes, up to a point I think the majority culture has to be the default, but that does not mean it’s the white majority culture, or the Protestant majority culture, or my own culture. It’s the American culture. There are some over-arching values we share as Americans, including freedom, self-determination, individual rights, etc. Other aspects of American culture may be hard to pin down or define, but it does exist and we know it when we see it. As just one example that keeps on surfacing in this discussion: American culture does not believe that high test scores are the end all and be all, nor that they equate with a person being “better.”</p>
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<p>The argument in question was the claim that white students would feel uncomfortable being in a place where they are a minority group, rather than their accustomed position as the majority group. Members of minority groups might say “so what, we’ve been living as members of minority groups all of our lives; it is not that hard…”.</p>
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<p>Perhaps a question would be – would the hypothetical white students in discussion here find [UC</a> Riverside](<a href=“http://www.ucr.edu/about/facts.html]UC”>Rankings and Facts | University of California, Riverside) to be within their comfort zone (only 17% white, but not majority Asian or any other group).</p>
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This is where, I think, there is some tension between your positions on the two issues we’ve been discussing here. I think this is fully consistent with your views on URMs–you just don’t think there should be any thumb on the scale because of race alone–we just don’t agree about that.</p>
<p>But this position, I think, causes difficulties when applied to the issue of whether schools are discriminating against Asians to prevent too many of them from overrrunning the campus. Princeton, at least, claims that it is doing what you support–looking at a broad range of qualifications. They claim that, as between whites and Asians, race is not a factor. But the people who don’t believe this are primarily pointing to disparities in stats to support their suspicion that discrimination is going on. As I keep pointing out, there are things these schools do even beyond indivdual factors like recs, interviews, and achievement in ECs–they also look at “diversity” in terms of geography, sports, ECs, and planned field of study. They will take an oboe player and reject a violin player. If these things have the indirect effect of reducing Asian admits, are they objectionable? Does it matter what their intent is? And how will you measure the results to determine whether the school is doing anything wrong?</p>
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<p>They’re not exactly the same. A is “positive” discrimination whereas B is “negative” discrimination. But they are fundamentally the same.</p>
<p>Again, the way I see it, to the extent that there is no qualification gap among X categories between "URM"s and whites/Asians, "URM"s are NO LESS LIKELY to be admitted than are whites/Asians.</p>
<p>Hence, there is NO REASON why “diversity” cannot naturally occur. But at the same time, there is no guarantee that the “desired” result will occur naturally. It seems to me, then, that racial preferences exist only to guarantee that the outcome/result looks as “desired.” I do not support that.</p>
<p>An extremely simplified example will demonstrate my point. Suppose there are only three slots but fifteen applicants, all of whom are equally qualified. You have seven whites, seven Asians, and one “URM.” Since we assume equal qualifications, the applicants are randomly selected; there is no discrimination.</p>
<p>The “URM” has a 20% chance of filling one of the slots (1 - (14/15)(13/14)(12/13))…as does everyone else. At an individual level, he is no less likely to be admitted than any of the remaining applicants. But chances are, he won’t be chosen…just like everyone else.</p>
<p>If you’re saying that we have to consider race to as to guarantee a “sufficient” level of “URM” representation…how is that not a quota?</p>
<p>It’s hard to say without visiting, since labels don’t tell the story. In theory I’d say yes, the hypothetical white student would be fine at Riverside there since no one group would be dominant enough to cause exclusion of non-members.</p>
<p>However, the same argument I used regarding Asians applies to Latinos. There are those who look white and are culturally American, and there are those who are darker skinned and are also culturally American. But we know Latinos who live in NYC exactly as they did in Central or South America–they watch the same TV programs, decorate their houses the same way, dress as they would in Colombia, Mexico etc., speak only Spanish except when they absolutely have to speak English, and operate under all the cultural norms of their country of origin or their parents’ origin. If the 28% were of the latter orientation, and the 39.9 % Asians were of the recent immigrant variety, maybe the hypothetical white student would still feel alienated because almost 70% of the student body would not be culturally American.</p>
<p>The diversity letter both my D and DH and I got from a CA school certainly communicated that their impression of the Latinos who might attend their school was consistent with the second group. The letter had to reassure us of things that no culturally American parent would require assurance about.</p>
<p>Psshhhh Culturally American. There is no American culture, only a mixture of other cultures.</p>
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<p>And we have a fundamental disagreement. Fair enough.</p>
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<p>Yes, “holistic admissions” was created to reduce Jewish enrollment at Harvard. Your point, which is occasionally raised by people who are wary of “holistic admissions” though not necessarily averse to it, is well taken.</p>
<p>You ask, “If these things have the indirect effect of reducing Asian admits, are they objectionable?” I’ve said that I would still support the end of racial preferences even if it meant reducing Asian enrollment. No doubt you could have guessed that as a conservative, I don’t put much stock in the theory of “disparate impact.” So no, if admissions were race-blind but “holistic” elements had the indirect effect of reducing Asian admissions, I would not object.</p>
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Should we recoil in horror at the word “quota”? I say it’s not really a quota, because elite schools can’t meet what the quota would be without lowering their standards too much.</p>
<p>And there aren’t three spots–there are thousands of spots in elite colleges. I just think it’s churlish to grouse that some URMs–qualified URMs–are getting a few of them.</p>
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Then what, if there is one, is your reason for disbelieving Princeton and the others when they say they have already do this as between Asians and whites? There are others on the thread who believe that the disparity in scores tells the tale. There is precious little evidence that other factors aren’t responsible for the disparate admissions. There is one study (really on another topic) that shows that Asian admittees at Duke (and only Duke) in some prior year had recs and essays that were better than white admittees. But where did they live? What ECs and prospective majors did they have? None of that was addressed in that study.</p>
<p>So why mix up two things? If you want to crusade against preferences for URMs, that’s one thing. But why confuse it with the inadequately supported suspicion that Asians are being disadvanted as compared to whites?</p>
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<p>But then, if you don’t believe that “best qualified” is solely / only measured by SAT’s (and I believe you in this statement), then does it matter if (say) the average SAT’s for accepted URM’s are below the average SAT’s for Asians, as long as everyone admitted is considered capable of doing the work? It might just fall that way naturally if indeed the school is picking the students they consider most interesting / compelling and only care that they meet a minimum SAT level consistent with being able to do the work.</p>
<p>Put another way. If Harvard (hypothetically) says that once you hit 2000 on your SAT’s you’re capable of doing the work at Harvard, and 2400 isn’t necessarily more compelling than 2300 … then what does it matter if the admitted blacks have an average of 2100, the admitted whites an average of 2200, the admitted Asians an average of 2300? Having them all be (say) 2200 is only the expected outcome IF you assume that SAT’s should be the primary focus / determiner of who gets in.</p>
<p>^ But URMs are usually worse in every factor than Whites/Asians.</p>
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<p>Proportional representation certainly implies a quota, but failing to be proportional does not mean there was not a quota. In my example, I argued that if you HAD to have “URM” representation, then that led to a quota.</p>
<p>And seeing as how quotas are illegal, yes, we should recoil in horror.</p>
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<p>“Three” was a deliberate oversimplification to demonstrate my argument. You missed my point, which is a bit ironic since you correctly pegged my view as “let the chips fall where they may.”</p>