<p>^^The “imbalance” is that most (don’t know the numbers but I think it is “most”) African American children are being raised in single parent homes, fathers unknown or in jail, many at the poverty level, many the children of children of children themselves.</p>
<p>Contrast that with the Asian-Americans, most of whom (at least in our school district) are the children of well-educated immigrants who have stable homes, a good income, and value education above all else.</p>
<p>Not blaming any group, just point out the vast differences in the two. Which one is likelier to produce a high percentage of high-scoring college apps?</p>
<p>No one has said that the elites’ way is the only acceptable way of doing things. </p>
<p>But if that’s what you crave so much – admittance to the elite – then that’s how they do it. They have holistic admissions and they are going to privilege some URM’s based on long-standing societal issues. No one stops you from rejecting their system entirely, since you object so much to it, and applying to the many fine universities that base admittance solely on GPA / SAT (and who, by the way, would love to have more Asians on campus). You want to have your elite cake and eat it too.</p>
You’re exactly right. Some people, including me, think that artificially inflating college admissions for African-Americans is one tool to try to undo that imbalance over the long term. Like just about any tool, it has a cost. In this case, the cost is that it reduces the number of admissions slots for others.</p>
<p>Whether you or I personally think there is something “wrong” with the SAT is beside the point. Obviously elite colleges <em>do</em> believe that that the SAT is not the be-all-and-end-all, otherwise they’d line up all their applicants by SAT scores and pick from the top on down. Obviously they <em>do</em> believe that if their “floor” for being able to do the work is 630, that a given 630 African-American may bring more to the campus than an 800 Asian and they may choose the 630 AA accordingly.</p>
<p>You so crave that prestige – I mean, this is really only an issue for you at the tippy-top schools, right? – but you allegedly reject their methods. But you still crave it!</p>
<p>It’s like going into the Louis Vuitton store because you so want the prestige of that brand, yet complaining that they have LV’s plastered all over the sides. That’s what it is. </p>
<p>Maybe if you opened your eyes to the fact that in America, success is not dependent solely on access to elite schools? That fact doesn’t seem very evident to the hordes of Asian kids on CC who complain that their parents won’t hear of them applying anywhere but Ivies / MIT / Stanford / Caltech.</p>
<p>Ah well. It’s not fair. Life isn’t fair. Plenty of smart white kids get rejected from top schools, but they don’t whine, because they can accept that they’ll do fine regardless and it might be better for society for the 630 AA kid to have a chance at the brass ring.</p>
<p>If Asians are complaining more about this–and I’m not assuming that’s the case–there may be some good reasons for that. First, they may feel they are victims of a double whammy–they think that their numbers are being limited vis-a-vis less qualified whites AND their numbers are being limited by admission of less qualified URMs.
There may be a couple of other reasons, and these may be related to the fact that a lot of the Asians we are talking about are either immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants. First, this may mean that they (or their parents) are more used to a model of college admissions where stats are everything. Second, it means that they may have a less personal understanding of the history of race relations in the U.S., and certainly a feeling that they shouldn’t be asked to help pay the “tax” for those past injustices. On the last point, I would just point out that non-white immigrants are reaping some real benefits from the changes in racial attitudes in the U.S. that came about at great cost to people here.</p>
<p>Some of them do whine, quite briefly; then they move on. There’s the difference. </p>
<p>College admissions is about mutual attraction, and the equal perception of that mutual attraction. In the personal realm, how one handles being jilted, or the anticipation of being jilted, can affect one’s next phase in personal relationships quite negatively. How successful has anyone here been at winning, or winning back, a love-interest, when using a negative approach (whining, protesting, retaliating, criticizing)? And has this worked, the longer you do it? Think about it. </p>
<p>However, being irresistible, or becoming irresistible, to the love-object usually works a lot better.</p>
<p>Count the years some posters have been on these boards complaining about the Unfairness of (Elite) College Admissions, instead of making themselves irresistible. There can only be one reason: such people are personally convinced that there is only one utlimate path to economic success and/or social acceptance in the U.S.A. But that is not something perpetrated by those colleges themselves. </p>
<p>Several of you need to widen your information base, even on CC – where on both the Admissions Forum and the Parents Forum there are discussions about employment outcomes after college graduation as well as the pros and cons of various educational paths. Graduates of Elite U’s are not necessarily being automatically hired any more quickly than those (overall) from non-elites. Some of us are fortunate enough to have a S or D working immediately in their fields of study; others (including friends of those same S’s & D’s, from the same Elites) have had to travel down intermediate tributaries or shift course entirely, at least for the time being. Welcome to the real world of the 21st century in the First World, where the streets (surprise!) are not paved with gold. They are, however, paved with opportunity for those who seek those opportunities creatively & with positive, enterprising attitudes.</p>
<p>I was watching some cable news show recently where one of the featured introductions discussed someone who started his climb to success at Michigan State University. He now has a position of considerable influence.</p>
<p>Sorry, I misread your “certain twinge” for “cringe.” I therefore rephrase my question: do you likewise feel a ‘certain twinge’ at the founders of Brandeis University? After all, as I understand it, your reasoning implies that the Jews of yesteryear should have been perfectly content with their 15% enrollment level at Harvard, since 15% already demonstrated “extreme overrepresentation.” Thus, there was no need to found Brandeis, yes?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>For the n-th time, these values can be thought of as minimum and maximum, respectively. Once you start adding “soft” and “other” factors into play, it’s very possible that the former would rise while the latter falls. Do you disagree with me that these values will very likely change upon addition of aforementioned additional variables?</p>
<p>If this is true, then the solution is socioeconomic preference, not racial preference. I strongly disagree with the attitudes expressed by some here that it is acceptable, even noble, to extend preference to wealthy and elite blacks, who are the exact opposite of the poor blacks you described. The wealthy and elite have the opportunity and resources to send their children to prestigious private schools. They have the wherewithal to pay for expensive test preparation. They possess the means to hire first-class counselors like Michele Hernandez to get their children into elite universities. The poor can do none of these, at least not without great suffering and postponing of gratification.</p>
<p>Indeed, this mentality of “any black counts, even if he’s already elite” has had unintended and comic consequences, as it has directly resulted in a large proportion of the black students at elite universities coming from Caribbean or African immigrant families. Hindsight is always 20/20, but to not have foreseen this was sheer folly.</p>
<p>If it’s the poor you want to help, then it’s socioeconomic preferences you should support, as they directly target the problem - poverty - instead of using an inefficient proxy (ie. racial classification).</p>
<p>I will repeat my position once more. Elite universities can structure their holistic admissions however they like. But if they’re going to use racial preferences, they ought to be noble enough and firmly distance themselves from federal financial assistance. I have repeatedly stated that I do not think my position is unfair in any way. The way I see it, if it’s worth that much, then surely they ought to be willing to finance it themselves.</p>
<p>No, the real cost is that it doesn’t actually do anything “over the long term,” as the blacks you’re admitting via the current system mostly come from families that have already “made it.” Moreover, if you’re still arguing from a social justice perspective, where is the justice in extending preference to students who in essence are like me - the children of immigrants? There is none.</p>
<p>To clarify, as defined by Jerry Kang, negative action is the practice of treating Asians worse than “equally qualified” whites, not “less qualified” whites.</p>
<p>The problem is that the “[more] personal understanding” you’re alluding to leads to a very perverse form of social “justice,” as it in effect imposes penalties on people who did not perpetrate the crime. If you want to punish the slave owners and the slave breakers themselves, that’s justice, albeit Old Testament style. There is no justice in punishing people who did not commit the injustice, a view firmly established by Justice Powell in Bakke: [T]here is a measure of inequity in forcing innocent persons in respondent’s position to bear the burdens of redressing grievances not of their making.</p>
<p>I can’t believe we are back to this discussion from Diversity 101.</p>
<p>Using race as a factor in admissions, as approved by the U.S.Supreme Court, is done not to rectify past wrongs, but to benefit the entire student body, including Whites and Asians. The socioeconomic status of the URM is irrelevant in this analysis. Rich URMs are just as valuable as poor ones.</p>
<p>Socioeconomic diversity is another category of diversity entirely.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if you’re aware, but I attend a public university, and I only applied to one private institution three years ago, which incidentally is a liberal arts college. You seem to be arguing that the only reason why I disdain and oppose racial preferences is because I’m “bitter.” In fact my acceptance rate as a high school senior was 100%. I oppose racial preferences not because I “crave” something I didn’t “get.” I oppose them because I find it utterly inane that the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to continue discriminating on the basis of race. As Justice Kennedy has written, “[t]o make race matter now so that it might not matter later may entrench the very prejudices we seek to overcome.”</p>
<p>Yep. That’s how it is. I can live with the fact that my white, upper-middle-class Jewish kids might wind up not getting into their college of choice because that college chose to privilege a poor Afr-Am clawing his way up from the ghetto who isn’t as “qualified” (in the sense of test scores, GPA, etc.). That’s life; no one ever said that they were guaranteed spots in those schools or that life had to work out entirely fair. I still know that I’m far more privileged that that kid overall, so as they say, *noblesse oblige. *</p>
<p>We’re sorry that many Asian immigrants don’t quite get how blacks and Native Americans have been treated in this country. Look, my ancestors didn’t enslave any blacks. But if you can’t get that the concept of diversity is one that elite colleges espouse for a number of reasons, then I submit maybe you’re not as “smart” as you claim to be. And if you can’t get that a smart kid can do well anywhere in the US - and that gasp, horrors, there is a world of really great opportunities outside the Top 20 and that attending #21 doesn’t condemn a kid to flipping burgers – well, then, again, you’re not as “smart” as you claim to be.</p>
<p>You’re taking Asian values and putting them into American situations, and then complaining about it.</p>
<p>fab,
I have always taken the position in this argument that my opinion is irrelevant, unless we are trying to fill in the gaps of knowledge about how admissions works - in which case I have offered my own theories and guesses based on what makes the most sense to me.</p>
<p>So what if “the social justice rationale” makes sense to me? What bearing does that have on anything? The U.S. Supreme Court’s position makes sense to me too, and I accept it. Everyone can benefit from a racially diverse campus environment. Even Ephenshade tested that hypothesis and found that it is likely to be true.</p>
</p>