<p>ah boy. .That is a clip from a post replying to a few posters in this long thread. The other posters had made statements, some pretty sadly racist, if I understood it correctly and the poster was replying to the statements/accusations.
It makes more sense within the context of the long thread.
Below is the whole post, found on page 11 of thread - I wish I were an Asian.</p>
<p>btw, when my f-in-law went to Harvard, Irish Catholic Joe Kennedy Jr. screamed common anti-semitic slur when he'd see him walk across campus.
During that same time period my mom was getting beaten up at grammar school for being Irish Catholic - Princeton school district. Her sister had been valdictorian of the k-8 school in the district, then assigned to the secretarial track in h.s. - no college prep for "those people".<br>
what a circle, eh?</p>
<p>-----post---------------
Fabrizio - my comments are not just based on my professional experience. They are also based on observations I have made of teachers, students, and guidance counselors in hundreds of high schools. They are based on countless hours doing educational and demographic research while getting my masters in education with a focus on public policy and college access at Harvard University. And they are based on the countless hours I have served as a volunteer college counselor for underpriviliged kids at lousy high schools. </p>
<p>Culturally relevant - well, Fabrizio, since you've lived in a bunch of different places, I assume that you can understand that different people - depending on where the grow up, who they grow up around, what social and cultural norms they experience, and what kind of teachers they have in school - speak and understand "proper English" very differently. And just because you've had the privilege of being taught perfect English conjugation doesn't mean everyone else has!!! I have to say, having lived in the Mid-Atlantic, New England, the Deep South, and on the West Coast, I can assure everyone else out there that not everyone in this country has had the privilege of being taught perfect English. Also, the SAT has historically come under fire because many of its questions - particularly on the verbal portion of the test - often talk about things that are only relevant to caucasian-Americans. Analogies, for example, can be very racially or culturally biased. That's why ETS removed them from the test recently and is looking at the way they phrase other types of questions in different sections! Also, for students who speak English as a second language, the SAT can be incredibly difficult for them and "score" them in a way that does not accurately represent their ability to learn; additionally, students who immigrate to this country and have never encountered a test like the SAT can be at a disadvantage because the format is so unfamiliar to them compared to what they were used to in their old home country. And BTW - your reference to ebonics is not cool...especially in this forum. </p>
<p>The SAT tutor - there are way more kids in the applicant pools at highly selective colleges who have taken these courses than you can imagine...and because the ETS itself and Kaplan have acknowledged that the test is "prep-able," I think it's fair to say that those students who don't take these course can be at a disadvantage in these applicant pools. Also, many of these prep classes are not offered at predominantly URM high schools or in their neighborhoods...check out your local phonebook...</p>
<p>Bowen and Bok chose the schools they used in The Shape of the River because they were all part of the "College and Beyond" - one of the most comprehensive educational databases available to education researchers. This database contains statistical, educational, and demographic information on over 45,000+ college students and their educational outcomes. Bowen and Bok grouped the schools together in the way they did so as to compare schools with similar selectivities - thus, schools with similar admit rates, average SAT scores for incoming freshmen, and average GPAs for incoming freshmen were grouped together - the groupings had nothing to do with the size of the institutions because this is not relevant to the study. If you read the methodological sections of the Shape of the River (and the rest of it) you will understand this better, and thus also understand how and why The Shape of the River - which by many who study higher education is considered a bible - is an academic piece and not a political one. Your assertion to the contrary is absurd - this work is based on statistical evidence and factual outcomes, not political fiction, whether you care to believe it or not. </p>
<p>And Fabrizio, everything you have said is zero sum - you speak in such absolute terms that it's almost possible for me to believe that you really do think we in admissions use race and only race to make our decisions. And you're wrong about college access only being about A college and not THE college - look at Caroline Hoxby's "The Return of Attending a More Selective College: 1960 to the Present" to understand this more. After controlling for many different factors like race, gender, GPAs, SATs, and cohort date (which other researchers who've chimed in on this debate like Stacey Dale and Alan Kreuger do not do), Hoxby presents pretty concrete statistical and qualitative evidence to support the claim that where you go to school does really matter.</p>
<p>My last word to you Fabrizio about this because I don't think you are being open-minded here...I agree with you that racial preferences are not the only way to improve social inequalities in this country. However, considering that white-Americans have been benefiting from racial preferences for centuries, I'm not exactly sure we can begrudge African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native-Americans, and Latino-Americans their fair shot at the prize...we need to balance the playing field and ignoring race in trying to do so will set us back more than it will advance us. Best of luck to you in your college search...</p>
<p>dbean...these are for you...my apologies for not explicitly including Asian-Americans in some parts of my arguments. You are very right to imply that SE Asian-American students - particularly students with Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian backgrounds are under-represented in our elite colleges. However, everyone I know who works in highly selective admissions is very conscious of this and their numbers are growing at this schools - and fast. However, your assessment of Jews in American higher education is somewhat off base and your tone when writing about them - whether you believe it or not or even realize it - is very hostile in my opinion. </p>
<p>Your use of Harvard as an example is relevant, and I agree with your point that more should be done for lower-income students at that school and others...but I do applaud them for getting the ball rolling and continuing to work hard at finding more of these students. In fact, that's precisely why I work in admissions and a big part of what I do at my institution. However, again, check your facts, or rather, update them...you state the vast majority of students attending elite institutions are upper-middle class or "elite"...this simply is not true and is changing every year. For example, over 50% of the students who are at Brown University are receiving need-based grant aid; this is a dramatic increase from the 37% that received need-based grant aid under a decade ago. At Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Williams, Rice, Dartmouth, Northwestern, Pomona, Columbia, and Grinnell, these numbers are similar. Families with incomes of over $150,000/year are qualifying for need-based grant aid at these schools, but these families usually have more than one student in college at a time. The socioeconomic "elite" at these schools is shrinking. And at many of these schools, the "vast majority" of students are not white. At Columbia, 48% of the entering freshman identified as students of color; at Pomona, nearly 50% of the student body are students of color; at Stanford, the incoming class this year is 55% students of color. And these numbers continue to rise at these schools and most of the elite colleges in the United States. And please, let's consider the fact that under 5% of the American population is Asian-American, yet Asian-Americans are roughly 23% of the incoming class at Stanford; 19% of the incoming class at Princeton; 17% at Northwestern; 26.5% at Wellesley...I could go on. So, are Asian-Americans, in general, being under-represented at these schools? </p>
<p>And as far as I'm concerned, you are blurring the line between race and ethnicity here. Asian-Americans are of Asian decent; Jewish-Americans are of Jewish decent. That's race (if you define the Jews as their own race). Chinese-Americans, American Jews, Japanese-Americans, Egyptian Jews...these are ethnicities...and I can argue that Jews are just as diverse as Asians are ethnically - there are black Jews, Asian Jews, Latino Jews, white Jews, Native American Jews, French Jews, Spanish Jews, Lebanese Jews, Egyptian Jews, Venezuelan Jews...I could continue. </p>
<p>I certainly was not trying to bore you with a lecture, and I would certainly be interested in speaking more about the systematic, deliberate, and blatantly racist exclusion of Jews in elite American higher education, considering I clocked in over 125 hours researching this topic in the archives at Harvard, Princeton and Yale and worked closely with one of this country's foremost experts of Jews in American higher education. And dedicated over 35 pages of my thesis work to it. But that's really here nor there...what's really important here is that you seem to think that people are ignorant to the abuse, exclusion, and discrimination that Asian-Americans have faced in this country. Well, most of the folks I've worked with in admissions at various schools are not ignorant to this fact...but we're also not ignorant to the fact that Asian-Americans, when considering the size of their population in this country, are over-represented in our "elite" colleges. And while I would agree with you that Jewish-Americans are over-represented with respect to their numbers in the American population, there has been a serious backlash against these students in the admissions offices at many schools recently; these students are being excluded consciously because of worries that there are "too many" of them at these schools and are very, very blatantly being held to a higher standard than anyone else. I've witnessed this personally in several admissions offices in the northeast; I've yet to see this with any other students. I feel like you are speaking and reacting out of personal frustration and, believe me, I can in many ways see several of the points you are making, but I strongly disagree with you that Jews are somehow being privileged in the admissions process at elite institutions (and I've got no personal stake here - I'm not Jewish). What is happening to some Jewish applicants in the admission process at some schools is conscious and blatant and everyone seems to be okay with it or ignoring it; I don't see Asian-Americans being treated this way - or any other groups being treated this way...</p>