Giving diversity its due.

<p>Asians and whether or not they are discriminated against is a completely separate issue from AA kamikazewave. If a school is denying asian students because they are asian, or overrepresented, that is wrong and not involved with AA.</p>

<p>Damn it, this stuff again.</p>

<p>How would denying asians because they are overrepresented not be involved with AA?</p>

<p>For the same reason that AIDS is not involved with AA.</p>

<p>Explain further. Intrigued, I am!</p>

<p>.....Because they have nothing to do with eachother</p>

<p>Neither do wristwatches and steaks!</p>

<p>good! you're catching on. </p>

<p>Increasing diversity has nothing to do with excluding asians</p>

<p>we've gone over this! increasing diversity is great, but whose numbers will you decrease in order to get that extra diversity! ORMs!!!</p>

<p>whoooooooooo.</p>

<p>It's entertaining how you guys are almost telling other people what their beliefs are. Well, more each other than other people.</p>

<p>
[QUOTE]
EDUCATIONAL BENEFITS THAT FLOW FROM A DIVERSE STUDENT BODY

[/QUOTE]
</p>

<p>It's not the end you're arguing about, it's the means. No one is arguing that diversity is bad.</p>

<p>
[QUOTE]
“Race-blind” is a bunch of baloney.

[/QUOTE]
</p>

<p>Race-blind does not mean you ignore race. Take the definition of need-blind. When admitting you in such a circumstance, the college will ignore your need. However, once you're accepted, your need-based aid depends mostly on your need.</p>

<p>
[QUOTE]
That's black and white, no pun intended.

[/QUOTE]
</p>

<p>If you say no pun intended, it probably means you intended it.</p>

<p>
[QUOTE]
The last thing we want is for progress to be sped up as good-hearted or profit-minded people try to round out their businesses and institutions.

[/QUOTE]
</p>

<p>The "guilty, white liberal" argument doesn't quite work here. If it works anywhere, it's with the people who started affirmative action, who wanted a quick fix to the racism present in universities of the time without really considering fairer options (don't get me wrong; I think Johnson was one of the best Presidents ever). What anti-AA folks are trying to do is eliminate concessions made to people solely on the basis of race. Except for the tiny minority of redneck wackos, but they're negligible.</p>

<p>When Michiganders, Californians, and Washingtonians voted out Affirmative Action, they weren't trying to limit anybody's freedom, as it's not a right to have special privileges in college admissions (or job hiring, for that matter).</p>

<p>Affirmative Action today is not about concessions, but about increasing diversity and societal integration of ALL races. </p>

<p>The voters in Michigan and California were poorly educated on the subject, not understanding that racial preferences were not "handouts" to people because of their race, but a means of increasing diversity in ALL races.</p>

<p>why do we need to increase diversity? because URMs are not applying and getting into these top colleges as much as we would want them to. so, in order to increase diversity, we effectively give incentives to URMs to apply by allowing concessions to occur during the admissions process. </p>

<p>California and Michigan have two of the best/renowned/popular public education systems in the country for a reason. Both states highly value education.</p>

<p><a href="http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/06/29/affirm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/06/29/affirm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>just thought I'd share, news about Michigan from earlier this ummer</p>

<p>good article; very informative. man, I hadn't even known that the seattle case was decided already (stupid me ><)</p>

<p>I'm sorry that you didn't have the attention span to finish the article, next time i'll be sure to link you to the cliffnotes.....</p>

<p>I didn't read the various comments under the article, if that's what you mean. After all, it's the exact same arguments that we're having here, just in nice blurb format.</p>

<p>No, really though. It was a good read.</p>

<p>Question. Why the hate?</p>

<p>Parents Involved and Meredith should not have been as controversial as they were. It is the fault of the supporters of positive discrimination for convincing themselves that binary racial classifications are "holistic" and promote "diversity."</p>

<p>William Thro has it head on.</p>

<p>
[quote]

"...[The Justices] made it clear that the diversity that was approved [in Grutter] was a diversity that included much more than race. The clear message for colleges and universities is that if you continue to use race in admissions or in the allocation of financial aid to achieve diversity, that diversity needs to be far more than just race...[after Grutter] many schools were assuming that diversity meant racial diversity and not the broader diversity."

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I actually agree with Tim Wise that the leftist supporters of positive discrimination shouldn't base their support on diversity, particularly since their conception of diversity is often loaded with holes.</p>

<p>Chief Justice Roberts rebuked the supporters of positive discrimination for playing word games. When quotas became unpopular, the supporters started calling for racial balance. When that got old, they started using racial diversity. What's next? I don't know. I disagree with their policies, but I praise their creativity for coming up with new terms. They're equally as good as the right-wing anti-science people who came up with creation science and intelligent design.</p>

<p>As a tangent, I view leftist support for positive discrimination as no different from right-wing support for creationism. Both camps are adept at semantics in arguing for their positions.</p>

<p>It's not a "quota." It's "diversity."</p>

<p>It's not "creation." It's "design."</p>

<p>"Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity is no fan of the Grutter ruling, thinking that the Supreme Court shouldn’t have let colleges consider race at all. But he predicted that it would be easy to show that colleges aren’t using race just as one factor among many, but as a factor that trumps others — violating the principles that Thursday’s ruling set out. Clegg cited studies that his center did about the University of Michigan’s admissions in 2005 — after the Gratz and Grutter rulings.
The center used Freedom of Information Act requests to find that the SAT median for black students admitted to Michigan’s main undergraduate college was 1160 in 2005, compared to 1260 for Hispanics, 1350 for whites and 1400 for Asians. High school grade point averages were 3.4 for black applicants, 3.6 for Hispanics, 3.8 for Asians, and 3.9 for whites.</p>

<p>Further, black and Hispanic applicants in 2005 with a 1240 SAT and a 3.2 GPA had a 9 in 10 chance of getting in — while white and Asian applicants with the same scores had a 1 in 10 chance of getting in. “Race was more of a factor after [the 2003 rulings] than before,” he said, adding that it was hard to believe that other types of diversity — removed from race and gender, but of the sort the court endorsed in Grutter — were really having the same impact as race. (Michigan officials said that the numbers released by Clegg’s group distorted the realities of admissions by leaving out many factors beyond test scores and grades that go into admissions decisions.)"</p>

<p>Just thought that it was interesting how other factors made up for much lower test scores and grades.</p>

<p>fabrizio: "Yet another example of your (hopefully) unconscious defense of segregation"</p>

<p>You know, if your aren't going to debate honorably, why do it?</p>

<p>"actually agree with Tim Wise that the leftist supporters of positive discrimination shouldn't base their support on diversity, particularly since their conception of diversity is often loaded with holes."</p>

<p>-I'm a conservative supporter, thank you. :rolleyes: I don't want leftist supporters like you using government to take away the academic freedoms of universities - or any other entity for that matter. </p>

<p>-There are no "holes" in my support; all I say is that a college should be able to decide what constitutes "diversity" and act accordingly (as long as said college doesn't say it WON'T admit any person of "X" classification without just cause) - I think that no school should be forced to have an AA program, and that no school should be forced to abolish one either. Where is the hole in that? YOU are the one saying what does and does not constitute "diversity", and what should and should not be looked at when accepting students to a school. I just happen to believe that individual colleges know their needs better than government bureaucracies and random citizens do. </p>

<p>I agree with Justice O’Connor; race can and should be one of many factors that a school uses to assess its “diversity” needs. I also believe that a system that uses race as the sole deciding factor between two applicants’ applications is unjust. The difference between me and the anti-diversity crowd is that I don’t believe it my place to decide for every school in America what is and is not a characteristic that brings diversity to an institution. </p>

<p>If the citizens of a state want to decide how students are accepted to a state-run school, fine; let them. If, however, said citizens want to start telling private colleges how and when to accept people, then I have a big problem with that. The line has to be drawn here, because if it' not, then any person with a sense of entitlement will claim "discrimination" and try to, in his own favor, change how a college admits people; and that is, to me, fundamentally wrong.</p>

<p>Great post, KK</p>