<p>It kind of is unfair, I do agree. I’m a black male and I don’t feel like I was ever at a disadvantage. I don’t think that it is in anyway not possible for me to pull out the same stats as anyone on this forum. Considering the college I attend and the many achievements I’ve already made at an age of 17, I don’t think I’ve done too bad for myself.</p>
<p>BUT, that’s not to say for everyone. I’m fortunate because both of my parents went to college, and both got graduate level degrees. Education has always been a drive in my family. My parents have always pushed me to succeed. In other families on the low socioeconomic side, however, the same mentality might not be there.</p>
<p>What I have come to realize is that the main drive in the minds of low socioeconomic young adults tends to be money. May of them want to be “professional basketball/football players, rappers, etc.”…and when that doesn’t work out some resort to the selling of drugs, prostitution, etc. </p>
<p>Not only this, but even the few that do want to go to college might not be able to because they have to help out with the family or they might be discouraged away from it by family and peers due to a multitude of factors (jealousy being one). </p>
<p>I don’t feel like any of you have the right to say that everyone was given an equal chance. Because if you do, you are completely and utterly incorrect. Also, you can not deny that African American’s and Hispanics make up the majority of the ghetto and low socioeconomic class. Again, if you deny, look at the statistics. That’s why medical school’s use race as a determinant. Because it’d be much more difficult to look at everyone’s financial record during admissions. Life is just life though. Eventually we’ll hopefully reach a stage when race isn’t a factor. Until then, just work hard and if you really have something against it, get off CC and do something about it.</p>
<p>^Your parents went to college. Other black parents could have gone to college. Because of this AA stuff, Asians and Whites are held back. It’s harder for us to get into undergrad/grad schools which might hold us back from having a good job. Asian immigrants have it much worse than any African American or Hispanic here. Actually, it’s not Asian immigrants, all immigrants from other countries have it much worse but end up doing much better. It’s survival of the fittest. If you don’t work as hard, you wont get as far. </p>
<p>Look at the NBA and NFL, it’s majority black. Does that mean that they should insert random Asian/White/Hispanics in place of deserved black athletes? I don’t think so.</p>
<p>^Yes, Asians are the hardest working people and no matter how they are treated, they are getting ahead because of that and statistics support that. This is the only way. Discussing all kind of numbers and statistics is waste of time. Just work hard and you get there, many can attest to that. Saying that there is good number of blasks from inner city schools who are applying to Medical Schools is distorting picture completely. There are blacks who apply to Med. Schools, vast majority of them are not from inner city schools they are from the same schools as all others who apply and many are from private HS’s.</p>
<p>I understand AA at the undergrad level (even though I don’t like it), but at the Med School level, it shouldn’t really be practiced. Once you’re in Undergrad, it shouldn’t matter anymore.
Everyone is on equal footing.
Top schools shouldn’t care about URM and ORM. They should just be concerned with accepting the most talented pool of applicants possible, even if it means that they have no URM’s and an Asian population of over 50%.</p>
<p>That is okay in theory, but what do you do with the AA communities that need doctors to serve the community. Who do you look to " there is a need in every community," and until you can tell me you or your community fills that need, you need to back off.</p>
<p>edit: I was’nt going to bring this up, but my father who has parkinsons has a miriad of Dr’s. The ones he loves and trusts are the ones with social skills. He is not looking at their diplomas, their UG SAT scores or their MAT scores. He wants a Dr. that meets his needs and is competant and personable.</p>
<p>Exactly, in theory. It does not happen in practice, except that Asians are getting accepted in disproportionate numbers despite of their ORM status, because nobody can deny them with their awesome stats achieved by great working ethic. Kudos to them, some of them have parents that barely speak English, some of them have broken English themselves, they overcome much more obstacles than most of other groups. Never bitter, always with smiles on their faces, always appreciative of opportunities.</p>
<p>Blacks were enslaved for nearly two-hundred years (oh, here I go). They were taken from their native land by force to work against their will. They were told they were lesser. They were beat if they attempted to read or write. Slavery didn’t end until the mid-late 1800’s. Even still, there was discrimination in the African American community up until the 1960’s. Reality check. My mother and father both went to segregated schools for the first few years of their life (until high school for my dad). When my dad made the bold move to attend a white high school, he was looked down at and spat on. My dad is EXTREMELY intelligent. He performed better than many of his graduating class, but since he was “black,” the school lowered his scores since they thought it was due to some “error” or him “cheating his way through.” He was almost expelled from the high school for having high stats.</p>
<p>Blacks just recently got equality after nearly 300 years! Don’t expect them to rise up and be social equals 40 years later. It takes time and no one here truly understands that because you simply aren’t black. </p>
<p>Being repressed has a psychological effect on a race. It’s not that we can’t achieve a goal, it’s that we’ve been told we can’t for such a long time. So, just consider that. The Asians that come to America didn’t suffer the same pains as many AA’s did for nearly 300 years. So unless you did, stop assuming that you know the effects. It’s pitiful to “assume” what someone else goes through, and a quality that any medical professional can not have.</p>
<p>Some new immigrants have better “preparation” before they immigrate here. Some do not. Many are relatively well educated in their birth place, but lack the most basic “life skill” like a decent fluency in the spoken language when they just land here. Their children therefore need to pick up English language from somebody outside of their family. I still remember that, in DS’s preschool years, we need to shell out money (“tuition”?) to keep hiring somebody (anybody we are able to, some may be his playmate’s mom – hire the mom and get her child too and the “learning environment” is a child-friendly setting – learn while they play!) in order for him to be better prepared for kindergarten. In a sense, his involvement with music early years had something to do with having access to yet-another good environment for him to be immersed in English. (His teacher spoke English, right? If a child could play violin in tune, his ears should be trained well enough to pick up nuisances in English, right? Maybe this was some naive thinking on our part here.)</p>
<p>I believe DS has no problem with AA even though he does not benefit from this policy. </p>
<p>One of a good “attitude” to have: The new immigrants benefit greatly from the “blood and tears” efforts of those who fight for the civil right back in the 1970s. Even now, AAs as a group really do not take too many (actually pittifully few) “seats” from anybody. Overall speaking, this society still gives you, an ORM, decent opportunity. This is just my personal opinion, of course, and I do not intend to be judgemental on anyone else here.</p>
<p>*And Jews were enslaved for much longer and also taken out of their land. They continued to be educated even in slavery though. *</p>
<p>Very true…and many immigrants from other countries were treated horribly in their homelands for generations and yet they come here and succeed (despite not being all that welcomed here either). It’s really all about how a family/culture views the value of education. </p>
<p>If people think that getting a good education is “acting white” then that’s a problem. (lol…maybe now it should be “getting a good education is acting Asian”. )</p>
<p>My son’s GF is Vietnamese. Her dad came to the US by HIMSELF as a 10 year old boy on a boat of refugees after many of his family members were killed. He didn’t know any English…he didn’t have any money. He’s now a NASA engineer.</p>
The asians get to this status with great potential risks. Once in a while, some premed CCers may come to this forum to complain about how sufferable they jave been because of the way they were demanded by their parents – and most of them are asians. And “asian mom” is almost equivalent to a dirty word for a lot of people.</p>
<p>Some of you must have heard of “Tiger Mom” right? (Hey, the last time I heard about it, both of their daughters are in Ivies – likely Harvard. This does not mean I approve or disaprove of what their family did. BTW, the parents of this family happen to be Jews/Asian combination – likely a very “deadly” combination. LOL.)</p>
<p>*Once in a while, some premed CCers may come to this forum to complain about how sufferable they jave been because of the way they were demanded by their parents – and most of them are asians. *</p>
<p>I’m not talking about that kind of extreme…the type who makes a big deal if you got a 98 on a test instead of a 100. …or the type that only allows kids to apply to Top 20 schools. That’s just nutty.</p>
<p>I’m talking more mainstream where education is important.</p>
<p>Does one’s country of origin play a role? For example, I am a 1st generation black American (born to Haitian immigrants), with a very french name. Would I be treated differently than say an African-American?</p>
<p>Do you identify with the Haitian culture?
Do you live in/near an area with a large Haitian community?
Is this community under-served by the local health care providers and are the local medical school(s) aware of the problem?
Do you have an expressed desire to work within this community?</p>
<p>If all of the above are yes, then it could make a difference at those local schools.</p>
<p>I am not an asian. However, the mere fact that 40% of the students at a particular college are asian does not mean that asians are being treated fairly, if, for example, the college would be 80% asian if things were done strictly on grades and test scores. It is well known that asians are forced to compete with each other for admission slots, and that super qualified asians are routinely rejected, even though they may be from families who are more economically disadvantaged than a particular URM.</p>
<p>So a child of a black physician or teacher gets preferential treatment over the child of a blue collar asian. </p>
<p>Asians bear the brunt of affirmative action policies. </p>
<p>I am not sure that colleges should be rejecting students just because they have “too many” of that particular ethnic group.</p>
<p>I want my heart surgeon to be the most qualified person. If that person happens to be an asian, then so be it.</p>
<p>You make some good points. But please consider the following. I have many clients who are from Jamaica. They are black. They do great in America. The women are usually nurses. Their children routinely go to medical school and engineering school. They don’t seem to worry about being discriminated against. They just work hard, and they do well in America. Their very existence belies the idea that seems to be prevalent in a large part of the black community that blacks can’t make it in America. So it would appear that some discrimination/oppression may be self imposed. For example, my mother told me that when she was a young girl, she told her mother that she wanted to become a nurse.
Her mother responded “nice jewish girls don’t become nurses”. Since her brother was smart enough to get into med school, I presume my mother might have made an outstanding nurse. Oppression against jews didn’t keep her down. Her own mother’s attitudes did.</p>
<p>Sorry all, I saw the date on this thread but since there was already a response to Pyro’s question, I thought I’d try to let it stand.</p>
<p>Looks like that’s not going to work, so:</p>
<p>Please use old threads for information only, do not post on them and resurrect them. Instead, feel free to use the New Thread button to ask your questions.</p>
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