<p>
</p>
<p>California has 11% Asians and the UC system attracts mostly California residents.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You bet I am and for two reasons. First, as I’ve said twice already, your argument is nothing but “Yale or jail.” You have yet to answer any of my questions. Why is it that Asians are told that they’ll do well wherever they go, but for “underrepresented” minorities, holy moly, they MUST get into an elite institution, “or else”? And if you’re too unwilling to look it up, our President did not say anything about more Americans attending elite institutions. He called on us to have more higher education, period ([Link](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/article/To-Reach-Obamas-2020-Goal/63646/]Link[/url]”>http://chronicle.com/article/To-Reach-Obamas-2020-Goal/63646/)</a>).</p>
<p>Second, you really think that most of the “underrepresented” minorities at elite institutions are like the guys I went to high school with? Puh-lease. They’re the sons and daughters of well-to-do professionals: lawyers, physicians, professors. Moreover, a substantial chunk are first- or second-generation Americans. 40.6% of the black students at the Ivy Leagues are first- or second-generation, even though they make up 13% of blacks aged 18 to 19 nationwide. So no, for these students, going to college is not going to move them up socioeconomically. They’re already up, way up.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Those “repercussions” are exaggerated and in some cases, patently false.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m not putting any words into anyone’s mouth. I’m simply describing posts as they are. Here’s a direct quote from Pancaked:</p>
<p>*So yes, I am suggesting, that by being part of a culture that ingrains characteristics to make help them “play” the game better, the so called “rules” should be changed to help those “losers” who did not have the wonderful advantage of having those characteristics ingrained into their culture.
*</p>
<p>You can’t make this stuff up. Pancaked believes in equality of result so strongly that he openly advocates for punishing “winners” who have done “too well.” His suggestion is patently absurd, even offensive, to me, but I know that I can’t change his mind because we have a fundamental difference on how to view the world. And no, it’s not about affirmative action or “diversity”; it goes deeper than that. I believe in equality of opportunity; he believes in equality of result. These two are not compatible; they are at conflict with each other. What I hate the most, though, is when people who are for the latter pretend to be for the former. You are NOT a believer of equality of opportunity if you believe that the end result has to “look” like something.</p>
<p>Here’s another direct quote from Pancaked:</p>
<p>These minorities will be left to lower-quality education on average than is the current situation, widening the ethnic gap economically and socially (this is called a positive feedback loop, as the effects will continue to magnify with each passing generation of reduced average education and reduced socioeconomic status). The social repercussions in society and in the college setting (from the lack of diversity) would be immense.</p>
<p>What is he actually saying here? I can sum up his entire paragraph in three words: Yale or jail. College rankings are real, and rank matters. Simply having a bachelor’s isn’t enough for an “underrepresented” minority. It has to be from a “higher-quality” institute like Harvard, “or else.”</p>
<p>As you can see, Pancaked doesn’t care much for my simplifying his argument because I stripped away the lofty language of social justice, leaving behind nothing but a dubious claim that is far from fact. I find the suggestion that “going to a lower-ranked college damages your and your children’s prospects” to be remarkably offensive to the thousands of blacks who ARE NOT at Harvard or its peer institutions.</p>
<p>^Hence, socioeconomic based AA. Like I’ve said before, not much would change for minorities if only socioeconomic based AA was used. Blacks, latinos, and Native Americans are generally much less fortunate than whites and Asians. My APUSGOV teacher studies AA, and according to his research, keeping only Socioeconomic based AA would hurt whites the most and help Asians the most, because white legacies would be denied. However, the URM number would only slightly decrease, because the loss of the few rich URMs would probably also be replaced by URMs, and some whites.
And not all URMs need AA. Many URMs I know are super qualified.
Socioeconomic AA, would pretty much have the same effect as race based AA, except not hurt other races, as the poorest races are indeed URMs.</p>
<p>I agree with fabrizio. AA should be based on socioeconomic factors. There is a strong correlation between gaining entrance to a race-blind college and doing well and coming from parents who went to college and have a higher income. Your race doesn’t have any bearing on the obstacles you faced to gain admission to a college, but it has mostly to do with your parents’ education level and income level. It is just so happens that as of right now Asians have a higher graduation rate and higher household income level than whites followed by Hispanics / Blacks on average. If we have a poor Asian where both parents didn’t go to college and a high income Hispanic where both parents went to college, the Hispanic student would still be an advantage in terms of college admissions as well as doing well in college.</p>
<p>Following the socioeconomic diversity thing to its logical conclusion, let’s imagine a school that is quite socioeconomically diverse: it tries to reflect the nation, even if it doesn’t manage to do so perfectly. Some of its students are rich, but not all that many more than those from the country as a whole. And since you guys seem to be arguing that socioeconomic diversity is the only type of diversity that matters, let’s also imagine that this school is absolutely, 100%, white. Yeah, it’s got Manhattan socialites, and yeah, it’s got southerners from mobile homes, but it doesn’t have a single black, hispanic, American Indian, or Asian person. Would that be an acceptable, if hypothetical, outcome?</p>
<p>That would be impossible, unless schools were only looking for white students.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I agree with beatlesdisturbed that the outcome you describe is not likely to happen. None of the UCs looks like that, for example.</p>
<p>But you’re asking whether it’s “acceptable.” That depends. How did it come to pass that the student body is 100% white? The answer to that question, to me, determines whether it’s “acceptable.”</p>
<p>If it’s 100% white even though many non-whites applied and all were treated without regard to their race, fine by me. But if it’s 100% white because non-whites were actively excluded from admissions on the basis of their racial classification, then no, not fine by me.</p>
<p>Remember that properly implemented socioeconomic preferences are based on family wealth, not income. There are more low-income whites than low-income blacks, sure, but what happens when we focus on wealth? A vastly different picture emerges.</p>
<p>The median wealth of a white parent in 1984 was $113,703, expressed in 2006 dollars. The corresponding figure for a black parent was $12,071. So half of all white families in 1984 had wealths less than $113,703, but half of all black families in that year had wealths less than $12,071.</p>
<p>Do you believe that if we set the bar at, say, $13,000, whites would still dwarf blacks? We need more information to answer the question, but I doubt it.</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://ccpr.ucla.edu:8080/CCPRWebsite/publications/conference-proceedings/CP-A-003.pdf]Source[/url”>http://ccpr.ucla.edu:8080/CCPRWebsite/publications/conference-proceedings/CP-A-003.pdf]Source[/url</a>]</p>
<p>Edit</p>
<p>If the facts above were not compelling, consider the following:</p>
<p>That is, while African Americans do earn less than whites, asset gaps remain large even when we compare black and white families at the same income levels. For
instance, at the lower end of the economic spectrum (incomes less than $15,000 per year), the median African-American family has a net worth of zero, while the equivalent white family’s net worth is $10,000.
Likewise among the often-heralded new black middle class, the typical white family earning $40,000 per
year enjoys a nest egg of around $80,000; its African-American counterpart has less than half that amount.</p>
<p>Set the bar at zero. Will you get mostly low-income whites or mostly low-income blacks?</p>
<p>Conley’s approach kills two birds with one stone. You can get racial and socioeconomic diversity. The approach favored by many racial preference supporters claims to benefit poor blacks but in reality benefits well-to-do blacks.</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://nypolisci.org/files/poli15/Readings/Black%20White%20Wealth%20Gap.pdf]Source[/url”>http://nypolisci.org/files/poli15/Readings/Black%20White%20Wealth%20Gap.pdf]Source[/url</a>]</p>
<p>“The median wealth of a white parent in 1984 was $113,703, expressed in 2006 dollars. The corresponding figure for a black parent was $12,071. So half of all white families in 1984 had wealths less than $113,703, but half of all black families in that year had wealths less than $12,071.”</p>
<p>SMH</p>
<p>Funnily enough, the OP seems to have disappeared.</p>
<p>This should be posted in thread of all the Ivy League/Top School sections so that we can get a variety of opinions. I believe there should only be economic affirmative action. Race shouldn’t be considered, but instead only the economic status of an applicant. The amount of effort that a student put in relevant to his/her economic status is the best way imo.</p>
<p>One thing doesn’t make sense to me however, why is it fine that 40-45% of the people at a college can be white, but not that many can be asian?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You’re not alone. I believe you’ll find that there is no good answer to your question. The best supporters of racial preferences can come up with is, “America isn’t 40-45% Asian, so colleges shouldn’t be 40-45% Asian.”</p>
<p>I’ve neglected to read most of the posts ahead of this, so I might repeat what somebody else has said, but think of this. Just because a URM doesn’t get accept to Harvard, it doesn’t mean they aren’t going to college. There are still plenty of other fantastic universities that will accept them on their merits. That’s all I’m saying. I know many URMs don’t have the same support or advantages growing up, but that’s something for our primary and secondary schools to work on.</p>
<p>Why are people screaming race based AA is the problem when legacy AA is a much bigger problem?
Like I’ve mentioned, eliminating race based AA wouldn’t drastically affect the student bodies. But if we banned legacy based AA, the % of white students would significantly drop, and the number of Asian students would dramatically rise. URMs would probably not be affected.</p>
<p>
The two birds that it doesn’t kill:
- Selective colleges would rather have richer and academically better qualified students than poorer and less qualified, URM or otherwise, and the rich URM person is exactly the same asset as a poor one in the diversity scoreboard, and a poor ORM is as negative as a rich one in the same measure.
- The richer better qualified URM (relative to the poorer URM) loses because he’s not competing against the poorer URMs for the position, but with the richer general pool.
What diversity is touted for and what it’s used for can be two very different things, and the two groups above wield a lot more clout than poorer students - URMs, ORMs, and the majority.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Legacy affirmative action is not a bigger problem, though I would like to see it eliminated. (If you did any research, you’d know that legacy applicants are usually very qualified, which should be surprising: smart people who get into top schools pass their genes on to their children, who end up about as smart. Why people have difficulty understanding this fact is beyond me.)</p>
<p>Eliminating both legacy and racial affirmative action would decrease the proportion of white students, but it would decrease the proportion of URM students even more (unless you consider Asians URMs, which would be incorrect). The average black or Hispanic student at an elite university is far less qualified than the average legacy student. (At Harvard, for instance, the average SAT score for legacies is 2 points below the school’s average – a meaningless difference. The gap between URM and non-URM students is likely one hundredfold that amount. Source: [The</a> Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition](<a href=“http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/archive/03apr/EDUC_legacy.htm]The”>http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/archive/03apr/EDUC_legacy.htm))</p>
<p>Transfers2010: SAT scores define qualification? That, as we all know, isn’t true.
By qualified, if you only account for GPA and SAT scores, that’s not holistic. The essays are highly valued at many colleges, and that could make the difference between an in and an out. So those studies are completely pointless, as they don’t account for holistic factors. As we all know, GPA and SAT score can only go so far.
Legacies aren’t necessarily smarter. Many are smart, no doubt, but contrary to popular knowledge, from what my brother and sister have told me, and from what my AA-obsessed history teacher says, legacies tend to do worse in college than URMs. As my Dartmouth interviewer said, “We’re more concerned with what you can do in and after college than what you did before college, although the latter helps us decide the former.”</p>
<p>"The gap between URM and non-URM students is likely one hundredfold that amount. Source: The Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition) "</p>
<p>transfers2010:Are you saying that Wall Street Journal link is the source for "gap between URM and non-URM students is likely one hundredfold "? I could not find it. I DID see something specific to U Mich in 1997.Apparently they still used “points” there, when that article was written in 2003, but I’m pretty sure they don’t now. I’m not sure if that has anything to do with your “hundredfold gap” comment.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Fair criticism.</p>
<p>“two groups above wield a lot more clout than poorer students - URMs, ORMs, and the majority.”</p>
<p>Dad<em>of</em>3,I didn’t understand that. Can you clarify? I’m gelting a little lost with the “bird killing” part too.</p>
<p>Also, does it matter to anybody else that the topic is seemingly limited to “top schools”? I feel like that’s addressing such a tiny “niche”, that most people don’t care about.</p>