Giving diversity its due.

Applying to College
201

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I think that advantages shouldn't be given to African Americans blindly. I mean, there might be VERY rich African Americans who will benefit from AA when in fact they don't anymore. So really, the advantage should be given to people who constantly face problems everyday.

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<p>Exactly; most African-Americans accepted to top universities are privileged, and the ones who are less privileged usually don't even apply, whether they're capable of getting in or not. The solution? To get those who don't apply but are capable of getting in to apply, to help low-income families during the formative years. Socioeconomically based AA wouldn't hurt, either.</p>

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Allowing businesses and universities the freedom to to do what makes them more effective and profitable

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<p>Fabrizio's weight was representative of merit. If businesses were to, say, gain profit by paying workers less than minimum wage, that would not be merit. Though it's hardly correct to say that Affirmative Action is that bad, the same cocept is at work.</p>

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does not the fed "artificially" create, or otherwise manipulate market forces in an attempt to bring about desired outcomes?

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<p>The Fed does so to prevent complete economic collapse. Nothing quite so drastic would occur if Affirmative Action was removed (noticed I didn't say banned, I said removed - I don't believe anything should be forced, I'm just making a theoretical argument).</p>

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The color of one’s skin should not trump the content of one’s character. In addition, colleges should be free to compose an incoming class which is diverse (and therefore meets its educational and business goals).</p>

<p>Being a URM should not be “comparable” to a 240 point increase in SAT scores or a half a point increase in GPA. Being a football player or a bassoonist should not be “comparable” to those things as well. Maybe a bouquet of flowers could help illustrate this. If you are looking for a mix of varieties, you aren’t going to “compare” the tulip to the daffodil - you are just going to choose the best flower from every bunch in order to assemble a beautiful composition.

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<p>Your first sentence contradicts everything you said earlier. Shouldn't diversity be measured not by skin color but by the amount one can contribute? And yet supporters of racially based affirmative action believe that race in and of itself should be used as a major deciding factor in admissions. If someone is involved in his/her culture and so can contribute, it will show in his/her extracurriculars, and so affirmative acion will not be necessary for those cases.</p>

<p>And yes, being a bassoon prodigy is a major talent that can greatly contribute to the college environment (being a football player is dubious, but one possible argument is that it brings prestige to the university, which is in the university's interest - according to your arguments, this, and benefits for legacies, are valid). Orchestras need bassoons, and if the star bassoonist just graduated, a replacement is necessary. On the other hand, if a URM graduates, a replacement is not always necessary.</p>

202

<p>I'm sorry, but to pro-AA side's "markets discriminate" and " university self-interest" arguments are contradictory. Please, make up your mind.</p>

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would that not mean that schools should also be gender blind, socioeconomic status blind, geographically blind, and legacy blind?

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<p>Not socioeconomically or geographically, because those almost guarantee a much different perspective (as opposed to race and gender in and of themselves, and legacies at all). Some may argue that legacy benefits in admissions may increase the amount of donations and keep alumni happy, but I still am against them.</p>

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there can no longer be a negative correlation between academic ability and economic status, and being of a currently underrepresented group.

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<p>Correlation, in this case, is useless. There is also a temporal correlation between ice cream sales and murder, yet ice cream sales do not cause murder, and they are underrepresented. One could argue a partially causal relationship between academic **achievement<a href="not%20ability">/b</a> and economic status, but that can be solved by the types of programs mentioned in the last post. There is no more than a negligibly causal relationship between underrepresented status and academic achievement. To argue a causal relationship would be treading the fine line between race and culture; race is genetic and only superficial, whereas culture is environmental and very important. Asian kids, for example, are more likely to exceed academically not because they are Asian in and of itself (I use that phrase repeatedly to circumvent Tyler09's selective reading habits) as many pro-affirmative action people would like to think, but because of culture. That's also what makes Indian food, African sculpture, and Native American pyramids associated with race; any African-American can make Indian food.</p>

203

<p>Holycow: "This view of the "market" as sacrosanct presupposes that people act as logical economically motivated beings. In reality, markets can be just as bigoted as the consumers that comprise it, e.g. boycotts of nonwhite businesses in pre Mandela South Africa and jewish businesses in Nazi Germany"</p>

<p>That is why in post 195 I included the caveat "as long as they are not doing anything which is evil and comes from the notion that certain groups are inferior."</p>

204

<p>Fabrizio: "Can they do it without resorting to judgments based on race?"</p>

<p>Nothing I have advocated involves judgements based on race. </p>

<p>Fabrizio: "I quote Justice Powell from Bakke, “Preferring members of any one group for no reason other than race or ethnic origin is discrimination for its own sake.”</p>

<p>Preferring members of any group for no reason other than race or ethnic origin IS discrimination. I agree. But nothing I have said advocates PREFERRING any one group.</p>

<p>Fabrizio: "Race-blind policies are quite different from segregation. The first says, “treat all equally without regard to race.” The second says, “treat some better than others based on race.” The first does not allow for the snatching of chips from the air. The second mandates it."</p>

<p>Allowing adcoms to create diverse incoming classes also carrries the expectation that they treat all equally with regard to race. Every student has the same shot at being evaluated for admission, subject to the same luck that at that particular place in time they will have the traits which best meet admissions goals.</p>

<p>Fabrizio: "So, it was tyrannical for Mr. Oliver Brown to walk his daughter to school and demand a seat for her? It was tyrannical for future Justice Thurgood Marshall to defend Brown before the Supreme Court? I mean, the “actual state of humanity” at the time was segregation, and markets responded to that. Are you saying it was wrong for those individuals to change the “actual state of humanity”?"</p>

<p>You missed this quote of mine in post 195 (and I don't know how many other times when I made the same point): ""as long as they are not doing anything which is evil and comes from the notion that certain groups are inferior.""</p>

205

<p>proletariat: "On the other hand, if a URM graduates, a replacement is not always necessary"</p>

<p>There are so many factors in an application file which might be both desirable to add to a class and simultaneously not necessary to replace. A limitless number of achievements, hobbies, personalities, job histories, geographic locations, etc. fall under this category. There is no merit to your point.</p>

206

<p>Proletariat: "Not socioeconomically or geographically, because those almost guarantee a much different perspective (as opposed to race and gender in and of themselves, and legacies at all). Some may argue that legacy benefits in admissions may increase the amount of donations and keep alumni happy, but I still am against them."</p>

<p>Do you think that a person who has lived as a member of a minority group which has suffered from a disproportionate amount of discrimination would not have a "much different perspective" to offer to a campus? Do you not think that there are African American, Native American, Latino, etc. cultures, and that members of those groups could have a "much different perspective" to offer as well?</p>

207

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Canuckguy. I fail to see your point of view. Would you elaborate?

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<p>All these talks about AA seems to come about after the urban riots of the 60s. I don't think it is co-incidental. Putting a safety valve in place is a wise decision for an establishment that wants to maintain power.</p>

<p>My personal feeling is that the biggest beneficiaries of AA are, by far, white women. If you have to share power, it makes sense you want to share it with those most like you. </p>

<p>If AA is an attempt to address past wrongs, then Hispanics and recent black immigrants (and children of black immigrants) should not be there, unless of course, that was never the real reason.</p>

<p>I don't understand this thing about separating minorities into ORM and URM but do not do the same with the majority. Personally, I think separating the majority into ORMj and URMj will tell us a great deal about who are running the place. Maybe this is exactly what they try to hide.</p>

<p>Am I the only one that thinks Laotians and descendants of black slaves are URMs while Jews and black immigrants (and children of black immigrants) are really ORMs? If this is done to create dissension among minorities, it is working admirably, based on what I see here on CC.</p>

<p>I can go on of course, but you see my point. Since I am not an American and do not live in the US, I can afford to be more objective.;)</p>

208

<p>The point was made that in applying AA schools should be more case specific in assessing disadvantage and diversity of perspective. I agree.
Colleges are far too focused on raising their published minority "statistics" at the expense of real substantive change. Consequently, schools end up with disproportionately large numbers of urms that grew up with the advantages of Park Avenue and Dalton or Exeter, and disproportionately small numbers of urms that grew up in poverty.
AA's greatest challenge in the area of college admissions has become incorporating the truly disenfranchised.</p>

209

<p>^holycow, yes that is a problem with AA that the schools are trying to adjust. The problem they keep running into is that these kids are not prepared to attend top notch schools. </p>

<p>But modern AA isn't about giving a boost to those who "need or deserve" it. Its about a school having the right to build a school around racial diversity. Having a strong african american or latino culture can be beneficial to a campus. And its important to expose people to the diversity of intellectual urms whose stereotypes might lead people to false opinions about them.</p>

<p>Proletariat, what was your point? To show that you knew the definition of a word? How does that justify the fact that the "casuation" between urms and underachievement & poverty that needs to be corrected between race-blind policies are the best choice and racial diversity on campuses occurs naturally?</p>

210

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I'm a bit confused myself. Are you seriously suggesting that adcoms place applications into three piles- majority, ORM, and URM? :rolleyes:</p>

211

<p>lmao who said that? It would be completely illegal to 1. make an "ORM" pile, as ORMs only exist in the realm of CC. and 2. To make separate piles in holistic admissions.</p>

212

<p>well, colleges already do lots of illegal things so they might just bend the rules in certain cases. NYU loan scandal anyone?</p>

213

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I'm a bit confused myself. Are you seriously suggesting that adcoms place applications into three piles- majority, ORM, and URM?

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<p>Many schools do so, and there are many more piles than the ones you have listed, lol! The bottom line is adcoms have different objectives to meet in an attempt to address their institutional needs. It may be financial, political, social, athletic, intellectual, etc, or a combination of all of these and more. </p>

<p>It seems as if many on here believe that a URM may be less deserving of a coveted selective school slot because of their economic position and that more of those positions should go to more "deserving" URM's, i.e., those that have less money. In your argument you fail to consider those higher end URM's as compared to their higher end mainstream peers. If you compare apples to apples across the board, most URM's are still at a disadvantage when compared with their socio economic peers. There are simply so few URM candidates as a whole within certain thresholds. If you look at the raw numbers of potential URM candidates and compared them with the majority, it would almost be laughable that so many feel the way they do about AA. You could take almost EVERY minimally highly qualified URM and place them about 3-4 selective schools incoming freshman classes and have all the others for everyone else. It's so sad that in a country with so much, we should have to deliberate over so little.</p>

214

<p>How do I know they use piles?</p>

<p>In another thread, folks are saying how the %tage of students requiring FA in the class seem not to vary much, under 1% from year to year if I remember correctly. You don't get numbers like this without "active management".</p>

<p>William Kidder's study of the five law schools seems to suggest that the elimination of AA help ORMs very little, certainly not anywhere as much as Espenshade's study would have predicted. That suggest some sort of cap is in place. </p>

<p>If those spots are not going to ORMs or URMs, guess who they go to? This explains to me why ORMs are not usually the ones that start legal action against AA. They gain little from it, whatever the result.</p>

<p>I don't think "diversity" is a good hypothesis of what is really happening. In my last post, I mentioned that there are over and under representation in all three piles. If diversity is truly the goal, the elite colleges can easily do something about it.</p>

<p>While neither diversity nor "past wrongs" can explain what happens, the study of the power relationship among the diverse groups can. In short, I believe the admission into elite colleges is a reflection of the power of each of the groups in the American melting pot. </p>

<p>If there is a better explanation, I would love to hear it.</p>

215

<p>^^^oic so you made this up out of complete speculation.... i thought you had a good point for a second.</p>

216

<p>It is cold-blooded analysis of data points that leads me to this conclusion, not speculation. I am willing to change my mind if you can provide me with evidence to the contrary. This is what the scientific method is really all about.</p>

<p>Positions taken based on emotion or self-interest is counter productive and leads to muddled thinking, IMHO.</p>

217

<p>'But modern AA isn't about giving a boost to those who "need or deserve" it. Its about a school having the right to build a school around racial diversity. Having a strong african american or latino culture can be beneficial to a campus. And its important to expose people to the diversity of intellectual urms whose stereotypes might lead people to false opinions about them."</p>

<p>Tyler, then they should be open and be honest to the applicants instead of pretending to be fair</p>

218

<p>How does diversity help the campus again? I mean, I can see how diversity can help a zoo, but I thought universities have different goals? Mainly focused around academics?</p>

219

<p>b/c humans are animals?
b/c everywhere else ppl observe top-school graduates like watching animals in the zoo?
b/c people watch them like a circus, and become greatly satisfied when they find those elite school graduates make some mistake or make less $s than they do. </p>

<p>So ultimately, people watch elite school students like animals in a zoo, and adcoms know that. so they want diversity so it's more interesting to watch.</p>

220

<p>"How does diversity help the campus again?"</p>

<p>-It contributes to the general environment of the student body and facilitates growth in thinking, perspective, ect. I don't think that most AA opponents would argue that diversity in general has no place in education.</p>

<p>-But as for racial diversity:
"Having a strong african american or latino culture can be beneficial to a campus. And its important to expose people to the diversity of intellectual urms whose stereotypes might lead people to false opinions about them."</p>

<p>it adds another dimension of background and exposes people to a different culture</p>

<p>-To those who still doubt: Suppose that suddenly today, race ceased to exist and everybody was white and had no recollection or influence of being anything else. Would America be just as diverse as it was before?</p>