Is Affirmative Action Bad for You?

<p>Kirmum, I'm curious as to how you would augment the program to ensure that only such students would benefit. Would you eliminate it for non-first gen? Would you eliminate it for students with parents who earn over a certain amount?</p>

<p>Like anything else, the whole picture needs to be examined. As I've stated before, we've all seen those who game this system. Affluent families who have given their kids private school or top public educations, ECs, test prep, and all of the exposures their non URM peers have had should not benefit IMO.</p>

<p>I see. So you don't believe the entire picture is examined today? Are wealthy URMs given the same boost as poor, first-gen URMs. I didn't think so. Maybe I'm misled on that aspect of it. </p>

<p>I've never seen anyone game the system. I don't doubt that it happens. I just haven't witnessed it. Then again, most of the affluent black kids I know happily go to HBCUs anyway and never even try for Ivies. What woud you consider "gaming the system"? Simply applying?</p>

<p>I haven't seen the gaming of the system, but I'd be strongly in favor of it! (After all, that's what white 5%ers do now.)</p>

<p>However, that won't deal with the lack of Pell Grant (low-income) recipients at most of the nation's leading universities. And it's not because they can't do the work. 34% of Berkeley students are Pell Grant recipients, and do just fine, and they would do just as fine at HYP, AWS, etc.</p>

<p>But for AA to truly work its magic (as it already has on a much smaller scale), it needs to start in pre-school. Or not even AA. Just equal treatment - over time (say, 60 years.)</p>

<p>By the way - want to strongly recommend Thomas Shapiro's new book "The Hidden Cost of Being African-American." (he teaches at Brandeis)</p>

<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/019515147X/qid=1102617480/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-7587783-0915850?v=glance&s=books%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/019515147X/qid=1102617480/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-7587783-0915850?v=glance&s=books&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Interesting article here, with a link to the Sanders UCLA study cited in the OP. Deals with law schools, but I've seen the same argument made with respect to colleges. The author is the former editor of American Lawyer, and appears on Lehrer News Hour and other such programs discussing legal affairs.</p>

<p><a href="http://nationaljournal.com/taylor.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://nationaljournal.com/taylor.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Mini, how are the 5% Whites gameing the system? These are private organizations who are entitled to choose anyone they want to attend their school. For whatever reason, they are still apt to want a majority of 5% whites. Feel free to fight your State school systems, but entitlement does not apply to private institutions. My issue with these schools and AA is that they are not achieving their own mandates! I stopped participating in helping Harvard achieve theirs when I saw that they were happy to claim doing their part for children of color by simply accepting assimilated upper middle class URMs. It's just so much easier. However, they are well within their rights to accept whomever they choose. People seem to feel all colleges are public.</p>

<p>Momsdream I'm surprised with a child in private school that you have not seen what I have in terms of what URMs top colleges take. Read top NYC preps, Choate and Andover, Beverley Hills. Again, it's their choice, I just can't support it.</p>

<p>Interesteddad, I am not the parent of any URM children. Nor can I even remotely claim to be in the URM group myself. I have benefited from college preferences, as I was a female in the math field which I am sure helped in my acceptance to my colleges and in my merit awards many years ago. I have a son who was a college athlete and it helped him get into a more selective school than his stat would have earned him. I do not have a personal agenda in the URM situation. I think I have made it clear that I do not like the situation but understand why it exists and cannot come up with a better alternative for the present. Over time, I hope the designation ends. But colleges have always had special categories that received consideration for admissions for any number of reasons, whether it is a special talent (often unrelated to academics), special connections, money, sex(male/female ratio is important), interest, geographical diversity, and I am sure that it will continue to be the case.</p>

<p>Mini is correct about the benefits of WWII on income (just as women got jobs in wartime they wouldn't have otherwise landed, so did blacks). But I was actually more referring to the many small businesses owned by blacks that were put out of business by integration. Things like dry cleaners, stores, groceries. SOme survived - funeral homes, hairdressers being two that come immediately to mind, but once black people were allowed to shop more freely in white stores, some groups of businesses went under (this wasn't totally due to integration, Walmart killed lots of small white businesses in the South, too). The difference is that, like black churches, these strips of businesses were part of the underpinning of values and money that held up the black middle class, and allowed them to dream of a better future for their children and the children of their poorer neighbors.</p>

<p>These subjects are so complicated, with winners and losers. Just spending more money on public schools is NOT the total answer, although as DH and I have said, around here we should try throwing some money at the schools first. Attitudes of kids and parents, expectations, many things need to change that money won't change. Someone posted recently that overspending on special ed was not a cause of funding inequities - well that's not true in Alabama. At my husband's high school, special ed is the largest single department (doesn't that make it normal ed?), only 5-10 kids take the PSAT yearly, and it has been a couple of years since they had a NMSF, this is a high school of 1600, predominantly white (70-80% with a sizeable poor Asian minority) - yet less than 10 years ago they had a 36 scorer on the ACT who was courted by all the big names HPYSM. The main things that are different are enlarging enrollments in magnet schools (all magnet high schools are predominantly black), the one city IB program that anyone can transfer into if they meet the qualifications and can arrange transport, and in the private high schools. What are left in the "regular" public high schools are kids who are not stupid at all, but who have grown up with entirely different attitudes and expectations about education both theirs and their parents'. That's not going to change overnight, and around here may never change.</p>

<p>Kirmum, I remember from another post of yours that parents (black and white, I assume)at your school were gaming the system by repeating classes already taken, etc. I though that was wild when I read it. What kind of parents would compromise their child's education in such a way? Perhaps these include some of the same people who are gaming college admissions. I guess I'm really not clear on what you mean by gaming anyway. Once I understand that, I might be able to better tell if I know anyone doing it. I have to assume you mean applying to a school where your stats fall below the median. I don't consider that gaming.</p>

<p>Jamimom:</p>

<p>In any case, I have learned a lot from your discussions of affirmative action and related issues. Thank-you.</p>

<p>Mini:</p>

<p>In terms of percentage of household income and all that. I wonder if an interesting study would be to look at the progress of other immigrant/ethnic groups who started from a disadvantaged spot in American ecomonics -- the Irish immigrants, the Italian immigrants, the Jewish immigrants, etc. Many of these groups encountered segregated, mostly substandard inner-city environments in the early days. Without affirmative action, these groups managed, over-time, to break down the barriers and claim a piece of the pie. The same applies, more recently, to Hispanic and Asian immigrant communities, although they are undergoing the transition a hundred years or more later than previous groups. </p>

<p>I think it is theoretically possible that "affirmative action" is simply a mechanism for trying to accelerate a long-term process that may not lend itself to being speeded up. In terms of URM college admissions, it seems to me that most of the minority students being enrolled in elite colleges come from families that are more than capable of carving out their own piece of the American pie based on their own merits. My guess is that 100 years from now, we may look back and see that "affirmative action" was irrelevant to a natural societal advancement taking place over the course of many generations.</p>

<p>Cangel, I know a number of kids who got into college with an athletic hook, and I don't know one who did not finish. Many did not continue with their sports, and though I have never done a talley, I would have to say, most did not. However, the kids I know fall into a small category of recruited athletes as I do not know any of the the true superstars that play football or basketball at the highest level of their sport. Nearly all of the kids I know either got into a school more selective than they would have gotten without the athletic hook, or, curiously enough went to a school less selective so that they could play their sport at a higher level or get an athletic scholarship. Those kids who got into the highly selective schools, particularly the ivies, are in schools with high return rates and high graduation rates. And those in prep schools are generally very well prepared academcially for college. Most of the parents that I know in this category are affluent enough that they could forego any scholarship that the sport brought, so that if the kid decided that it was too much to continue the sport in college, it would not be a financial catastrophe. In fact, I would often wonder why a a brillinant, young athlete whose parents are well to do would be going to U of Kentucky or West Virginia. If it were my child in that situation, I would be using the athletic card to try to get an academic "step up". </p>

<p>I am not really sure what is meant by "gaming the system". It is certainly an intelligent thing to use whatever advantages you have whether it is athletic prowress, some technicality in the law, URM, to get into the best college for you. These days there is a bit of a gravy train out there for the female athletes because of Title 9. I say, go for it. Parents of girls with high math science scores can use them to their advantage in getting a mores selective college or juicier merit awards. If they are legitimately out there, it would be foolish not to go for them. Voting to continue such programs or agreeing with them personally is a whole different situation. I voted against the Baltimore Aquarium many years ago, but that does not mean I will not visit it or support it now that it is there. I still do not believe it was a good use of money at the time it was proposed. </p>

<p>It is not up to the affluent URM to have to defend these programs, though they certainly can. They are legal. as our top court has ruled and the colleges which we all want so much for our kids have decided they want them. To agree or disagree is not the point. They are there. Understanding why they are there can be tricky and many reasons that I have seen people argue are often not true. </p>

<p>But "right" or not, any program that is instituted that directly or indirectly gives the feeling of loss of an opportuninty to someone is not going to be necessarily supported by those not benefitting from it. We do tend to agree with something until it hits us where it hurts.</p>

<p>"Mini, how are the 5% Whites gameing the system?"</p>

<p>Well, that's an easy one. Institutions that owe their very existence, budgets, and reputation to the fact that they can enroll large numbers of white 5%ers for many generations put together admissions requirements that they know will favor white 5%ers. These range from the use of SATs, to ongoing contacts over decades with schools gcs where large numbers of white 5%ers are known to congregate (and limiting recruiting trips elsewhere), to strong consideration of ECers which are for the most part accessible only by white 5%ers (these can range from fencing to equestrians to multi-lingual abilities based on residing part-time in the south of France), to legacies, to developmental admits, to alumni recommendations from old-boy networks, to letters of recommendation from Senators, Congressmen, and Presidents (all of whom might also be alumni.) That's just a start. And frankly, if I were a white 5%er, I'd do as much as possible to take advantage of this affirmative action any and all ways I could.</p>

<p>In terms of percentage of household income and all that. I wonder if an interesting study would be to look at the progress of other immigrant/ethnic groups who started from a disadvantaged spot in American ecomonics -- the Irish immigrants, the Italian immigrants, the Jewish immigrants, etc."</p>

<p>Yes, there are studies. But it isn't a matter of income - it is one of caste - cultural beliefs and practice developed as a result, not just of historical disadvantage, but of strong cultural belief in inferiority. There are other folks who were low-caste in their home countries -- Mien, upland Hmong, etc. -- who so far do even more poorly over time than African-Americans (on SATs, school performance, income, etc.) However, I do think this will change more quickly, as most (white) Americans simply see them as "Asians".</p>

<p>But put that aside - let's look at the actual immigrant experience:</p>

<p>There are important historians such as Rayford Logan who have suggested that the last quarter of the 19th Century, and not the slavery era, was the low point in African-American history. Four million former slaves wandered rootlessly around the defeated South, their homes and way of life, poor as it had been, disrupted to a far greater extent than those of their former masters. A new practice arose that continued the practice of slavery well into the 20th Century. (Did you ever read that one in your history books?) This practice was called “peonage” (being a particularly virulent form of sharecropping), or, even worse, “convict peonage”. </p>

<p>“Convict peonage” was quite a complex system. A Black man would be arrested for “vagrancy” (another word for unemployment.) There was plenty of that already, but it could also be created by a plantation owner simply firing a hired hand, and then having the worker arrested for trespassing or vagrancy for occupying his own house situated on the owner’s land. The employee would be ordered to pay a fine, which he couldn’t afford, and would be incarcerated. A plantation owner would pay the fine and “hire” the employee until the latter could afford to pay off his debt, which might be never, or at least until the value of his labor declined to the point that he wasn’t worth keeping. Peons were charged exorbitantly for their food, clothing, and shelter (which was often minimal), with all records of the debt, of course, kept by the “employer” alone. They would be chained together at night in barrack conditions and guarded, at state expense. If the peon ran away, he would be hunted down with bloodhounds, again at state expense. </p>

<p>One important difference between peonage and slavery is that while slaves represented considerable monetary value for the plantation owner, peons had almost none and therefore could be mistreated, whipped, and even murdered without monetary loss. While convict peonage was outlawed by the federal government in 1901, enforcement of the law was slow. The first case against peonage in Texas was brought in court in 1927, and convict peonage was still practiced (though rarely) as late as 1960, during the lifetimes of many of the readers of this book! In the areas of the South where convict peonage was not practiced, the system of sharecropping held African-Americans (and some poor white people as well) in bondage to the ground they worked to pay off debts, or in perpetual bondage because their contracts prohibited quitting one employer and hiring on to another without the former’s knowledge and consent. These were certainly not conditions under which Black Americans could engage in wealth creation. </p>

<p>Hundreds of thousands of African-Americans came north, seeking a new life. They had to compete for jobs and other resources in the industrial cities with the new waves of immigrants, like my grandparents and great-grandparents. Now the new European immigrants had it hard. They had to adapt to a new culture, new language, and new customs. Many were peasants who had never lived in cities before. Few had brought any resources with them. They had few marketable skills and, of course, no bargaining power in the marketplace for labor.</p>

<p>So why didn’t the new immigrants fare as poorly as African-Americans on the wealth creation front? Well, for one thing it would be a disservice to neglect the great gifts the European immigrants did bring with them. Many of the new immigrants came in family, extended family, and/or village/regional groupings. They brought with them traditions of community assistance. They shared a common language and culture, and many were literate in their own native tongue. They had traditions of inheritance, and many brought their children with them. Having arrived here, they were free to own real property, including their own homes, once they could purchase them (often with the assistance of self-help associations.) Ethnic-group-based credit associations facilitated the setting up of small businesses within communities, as they do to this day. In short, though initially without tangible resources, immigrants such as my ancestors within a generation had access to many of the preconditions of wealth and capital accumulation.</p>

<p>African-American males usually came to the cities without their wives or children. They were the last hired and first fired, and usually were restricted to the most menial and dangerous positions on the factory floor. They were paid the least and had the fewest benefits. In many northern cities, their options for home ownership (an absolutely key element in the creation of wealth for most people, as will be discussed below) were severely restricted, even when they could afford it. In many places, public schools were segregated from their very inception. And it is here that the contrasts between race and ethnicity become apparent, because unlike other immigrants, African-Americans shared little in common with each other beyond skin color, a legacy of slavery, and present-day poverty and oppression. They were bound neither by common heritage nor culture, nor former free association. Rarely did they experience the advantages of extended family or kinship groups. And right through the end of the 20th Century, because pensions (and, later, Social Security benefits) were based on wages earned during one’s working years, older African-Americans were condemned to poverty. As they could not afford decent health care and were much more likely to be exposed to poor working conditions, life expectancy for African-American males remained much shorter than for white Americans, and surviving females were so much poorer as a result than their white counterparts. Almost needless to say, there was little basis for inheritance among African-American families.</p>

<p>In the 20th Century, tens of thousands of American males escaped poverty by joining the military, sometimes making a career of it. Virtually no African-Americans made careers in the military prior to 1950. So-called “intelligence” testing, the child of the eugenics movement, prevented most African-Americans from entering the military. For those who did get in, the military was segregated, and benefits available to those who did were far from equivalent to those of their white counterparts. When veterans marched on Washington in the 1930s demanding benefits and relief for the nation’s veterans, there was nary a Black face among them. </p>

<p>Another avenue for wealth creation was entry into steady white-collar employment in federal, state, or municipal civil services, fire and police departments, and into the professions. But because of systemic discrimination, there was almost a complete absence of African-Americans, even as second generation members of European immigrant communities made their way into them."</p>

<p>That should give you a start.</p>

<br>


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<p>Right. But, if you look at an African-American community in the last several decades. There has been no restriction on military service. There has been no restriction on civil service employment; in fact, most southern cities have a black controlled patronage system, including fire and police services. There are certainly strong community support functions, often centered around the Baptist Church. </p>

<p>So, are we somehow to assume that these communities are not capable of the same kind of slow, steady acquisition of a piece of the American pie, regardless of what may have happened a century ago? I think that is entirely too pessimistic. In fact, I think we have seen many people from the African-American community grab a very nice slice of the American pie. </p>

<p>My point is that maybe we are looking at societal changes through the prism of an overly short time frame. In many ways, I think you would have to view the 1950's and 1960's as the starting point for the African-American community's assimilation, equivalent in time to when the Irish immigrants stepped off the boat. My question is whether Affirmative Action really has much impact or is it just a tangential side-issue dwarfed by the slow, but steady integration in American life by any ethnic community, a process that could only start for the African-American community when systematic legal discrimination began to ebb?</p>

<p>I'm certainly not downplaying the uniquely difficult history of African-Americans in the United States. But, that is water under the bridge. You can't unspill the milk. What is relevant today is the progress of that community going forward. Part of assimilation of any ethnic group is the gradual reduction in prejudice or "stigma". I would hate to see a policy, such as affirmative action, perpetuating prejudice or "stigma" and placing a barrier to the natural course of assimilation.</p>

<p>I don't know why you are having such a difficult time understanding the difference between low-income immigrants and a semi-indigenous caste grouping. Other caste groupings who immigrated to the U.S. (Mien, upland Hmong) are NOT doing better than African Americans. Nor are Native Americans. When you lump 'em all together, you miss the relevant comparison group.</p>

<p>But be that as it may - as I noted, the current difference in educational spending per minority student (and in many areas of the country, that overwhelmingly means Black) is more than $1,000 per student per year. It had been even larger. Now your pushing, what is it, 60? Forget slavery, forget 1875, forget 1925, forget the giant welfare program for white Americans in the 1950s (they called it the "GI Bill"), forget all that. Just take the advantages offered to white Americans during your lifetime, per year, and multiply them out - just to figure out how much it would take to make it even. Not AA, just even. Fair, equal treatment, over a period of 3 generations - not AA, just fair, equal treatment. For three generations.</p>

<p>Let's look what has happened in your lifetime (or just before):</p>

<p>Home ownership was and remains for many Americans the key to wealth and capital creation. A home is for most people a leveraged asset. Instead of paying the landlord monthly, the same income is ‘banked’ against a mortgage placed on the asset itself. Rather than an expense, it is a fixed form of savings. For most Americans, their home remains by far their largest financial asset. Secondly, the value of this asset tends to increase even while it provides the critical need for shelter and serves as the center of family life, with, it is hoped, a somewhat limited cost in upkeep. This growing asset can then be passed on in the form of inheritance either in its current form or when sold for cash, enhancing the opportunities of future generations. Finally, as an asset, houses can be leveraged against for other purposes, such as, for example, paying for the kids’ college educations. It is most common for banks to offer loans to small businesses – the bread and butter of wealth creation – leveraged against the value of the home. This entails risk, of course, as many have found out. But such risk is actually no greater than agreeing to pay the landlord on a monthly basis, rather than putting the money into mortgage payments. In other words, the failed small businessperson simply ends up a renter.</p>

<p>In 1900, the African-American home ownership rate (20%) for males ages 20-64 was less than half that of whites (46%). Worse yet, much of this home ownership was in the form of sharecropper shacks in the South, hardly an asset that could be leveraged. In 100 years, while there have been gains in relative terms, and home ownership is more common among both, the percentage-point gap between African-American and white home ownership has not improved. In 2002, 74.5% of white families owned their own homes, compared with 47.9% of Blacks, representing the same 26 percentage-point gap that existed at the dawn of the 20th Century. </p>

<p>There are obvious reasons for the continuing gap. These include continuing differentials in income, based upon lack of access to better-paying jobs, lack of community capital for small business ventures, lack of inheritances, and lower male life expectancy (meaning that a greater portion of the African-American working population would be closer to 20 rather than 64.) Discrimination of course played its own role. As late as 1950, the Federal Housing Administration provided subsidies to white mortgage holders who were bound by restrictive covenants to exclude African-Americans from any ownership of real property. In short, African-Americans remained renters and missed out on billions in wealth accumulation from home equity, virtually all of which went into white landlords’ pockets, and, later, in some cases, into white-owned business ventures. White folks stand on the shoulders of their ancestors, without denying that some of them might not have been very tall. By comparison, African-American, in the best of circumstances, have their feet firmly planted on the ground. It isn’t that they didn’t create wealth – they created a huge amount of it. But others were the beneficiaries. </p>

<p>(more to follow)</p>

<p>World War II represented a time of opportunity for African-Americans, which, however, did not last long. As white servicemen headed off to war, and following a threat on the part of A. Philip Randolph to lead a march of 100,000 African-Americans on Washington, D.C. in 1941, Black Americans were finally allowed an opportunity to work in the war industries. On the eve of World War II, three out of four African-Americans lived in the South, almost nine out of ten below the poverty threshold, and fewer than 5% of Blacks in the southern states could vote. More than 700,000 African-Americans moved north and west to work in the defense plants. In Detroit and several other cities, they were met by race riots among the white population protesting their arrival. But still they came. African-American women, who had earned $3.50 a week as domestic servants in the South, found themselves making $48 a week in aircraft plants in Los Angeles. And by 1947, African-American males earned 54% of what white males earned, a tremendous step forward. </p>

<p>Some 700,000 African-Americans eventually served in uniform during the War, though entirely in segregated units, and at the lowest possible ranks, where they were systematically denied promotions. Secretary of War Stimson justified his denial of field commands for African Americans by stating, “Leadership is not embedded in the Negro race yet; trying to make them into combat officers would be a disaster.”</p>

<p>And now we come into the period of current memory. My parents benefited greatly from the largest welfare program in U.S. history – the G.I. Bill and related veteran’s benefits. The overwhelming numbers of beneficiaries of these programs were white. As these programs were subsidized by all taxpayers, including those who could not participate in them, they represented a significant government wealth transfer from African-Americans to white Americans.</p>

<p>There were many categories of benefits, all of which seem to have been taken advantage of by my parents. In 1950, fewer than half of Americans had finished ninth grade. Through the G.I. Bill, veterans, like my father, were able to obtain college educations at little or no cost, opening up new employment and wealth-creating opportunities. With poorer educations to begin with, African-Americans were then discriminated against in private university admissions nationwide and prohibited entrance to public universities in the South, where the majority of them lived. In other words, they had great difficulties in taking advantage of this feature of the G.I. Bill even if they qualified. The G.I. Bill thus exacerbated the education gap between Black and white Americans. </p>

<p>Other aspects of post-military benefits were also part of the system that assisted white Americans while leaving African-Americans behind. Subsidized mortgage loans available to veterans made home ownership possible, and created opportunities for white developers and white-owned real estate companies in newly created (and virtually all white) suburbs. African-Americans could not purchase houses in the same tracts. </p>

<p>The racist impacts, even if not the intent, of G.I. benefits were reinforced by other choices in government spending. Federal transportation funds that might have gone to the refurbishing of urban public transportation systems (most African-Americans in the northern states living in cities) went to the building of new highways to, and ring roads around the suburbs. Tens of thousands of new jobs were created in the then lily-white construction trades.</p>

<p>With the exodus of the tax base to the suburbs, cities were (and continue to be) hard-pressed to maintain public education and city services to the remaining residents and businesses. The Black women who had come north to the defense companies and naval shipyards in Detroit, Long Beach and Oakland in California, Tacoma, Washington and a host of other northern cities, and where there had been a new flourishing of African-American culture, were pushed out of their jobs, with no place to go. They found it difficult to leave, (housing in the north often being extremely segregated), but businesses found no such difficulty and often did depart, taking with them many of the available wage-earning opportunities. As if to add insult to injury, income tax deductions for mortgage interest paid are, generally speaking, based on the size and value of the house – the more valuable the house, the bigger the deduction. To this day, working African-Americans returning to rented tenement apartments in the inner city every evening, who get no tax deductions for paying rent, are thus afforded the opportunity through their taxes to subsidize white homeowners in wealthy neighborhoods such as Scarsdale, Los Altos Hills, and Shaker Heights, even as they enrich white landlords (and their descendents) with the rent money.</p>

<p>Public policy also demanded that veterans be afforded the opportunity to work, and so a series of tax incentives were created to induce moms to stay home with the kids. The so-called “marriage penalty” in the federal income tax was not created with the intent to penalize, but rather as a “stay-at-home-mom” incentive. However, the benefit was only available to 1) intact nuclear families (extended, female-headed families, consisting, for example, of a mother, a grandmother, and children did not qualify); 2) families in which two adults did not have to work to make ends meet; and 3) families where the husband’s income was large enough to take advantage of the tax break. African-American women (like women generally speaking) having lost their higher-paying factory jobs, and now located in the northern states (and with a smaller market for domestic servants), were unlikely to be able to avail themselves of this incentive. Now that most families with two parents have both of them working, this incentive seems like a penalty, and has come under fierce attack, but not because it was unfair to Black families.</p>

<p>Welfare policies directed at the mostly urban, heavily African-American poor were almost diametrically opposite to governmental welfare policies directed at the overwhelmingly white veterans. Welfare could only be accessed, in many cases, where a potential male wage earner was not present, thus providing an incentive for the splitting up of African-American families, reinforcing a non-nuclear family structure that had been created in the slavery period. These welfare policies were strictly means-tested, and as city tax bases eroded, benefits declined. This is in sharp contract to benefits for predominantly white veterans that were not means-tested, but were universally available to them regardless of income, and did not decline. Instead of new homes, individually owned, that could be a source of pride, public housing confirmed poor urban dwellers as tenement renters. Public health clinics – among the last available sources of health care for the inner-city poor – closed or were severely curtailed, leaving hospital emergency rooms as one of the few remaining options.</p>

<p>So we need to contrast the two welfare programs (and they were both “welfare”, whatever we wish to call them): the first rewarded intact nuclear families (including those with inherited wealth) with adult education benefits, access to home ownership and to the suburbs and subsidized mortgages – thus enhancing savings, subsidized transportation, provided better funded schools for children, increased employment opportunities for males, gave incentives for mothers to stay home and care for their children, and was available to all regardless of income. The second penalized intact families, were only available after all other assets were exhausted (effectively penalizing people for earning money), provided no adult education benefits, reinforced lack of opportunity for home ownership and confined recipients to tenements. These programs also ignored transportation infrastructure needs, and (later) forced single mothers away from their children and into the low-wage workforce. It is no wonder that the income gap and, especially, the asset gap between African-Americans and white Americans persisted. As already noted, in 1999 the ratio of net financial assets of the latter to the former – in the same income brackets – reached as high as 99 to 1.</p>

<p>AA has been a profound success. There are now African-American role models in government, in law, in medicine, in business. Even though statistically the African-American community has gotten worse economically relative to white households, there IS a now the beginnings of a middle-class Black culture. And all of this without even close to equal treatment. But as studies in other caste societies have shown, after the first generation of AA, there is a backlash, which is quite predictable, including among members of the caste which has been aided by AA. </p>

<p>Forget stigma. Equal treatment. 60 years of it. Just the course of your children's lifetime. You got more than your share for most of the past 60 years. I'm not even suggesting we begin to "right the wrongs". Just equal treatment. Then it would be interesting to see where it ends up.</p>

<p>There's nothing with AA that a heck of a lot more of it wouldn't cure.</p>

<p>I have an ancedotal observation and I am not trying to place blame just an observation.
It is very expensive to raise kids nowdays, some estimate $200,000 to get to age 18 although I don't know what that includes. We were planning on just one child, as we had not the time/energy/money to have more. Still we do have a 2nd, born 8 years later and we are very happy to have her. ( but I made my husband go out and get fixed right away!)
I have noticed in the families of children that I am helping, that the immigrant blacks/asians seem to have very small families, but the AA families have larger families often without an adult male in the home.
I am trying not to be judgemental, as I realize that children have a value you can't put a price on, but I admit I have a hard time not thinking to myself "what are you doing having another baby when you don't have any income?"
so flame away.</p>

<p>Mini, you are not gaming the system if you are what you are (in this case a White in the top 5% of income) and you are what colleges want. When I talk about gaming the system, I am talking about those positioning themselves to look as though they are something they are not, they suddenly become what the colleges want. My earlier post talked about kids at a local public high school who came out of a highly competitive private middle school taking classes they have already taken as though this was the first time. Colleges will see them as public school kids who did a brilliant job in Algebra (which they took and got A's at a much more competitive school), etc. As for gaming the AA system, we know many families who position themselves to look far less affluent than they are. Their kids do not mention the Maine summer camps and equestrian activities on college applications. Public high school for kids who had never set foot in a public school before. Ethnic interests and activities highlighted. Gaming.</p>

<p>"As for gaming the AA system, we know many families who position themselves to look far less affluent than they are."</p>

<p>Tee-hee -- if you go to the financial aid section of this list, you'll see hundreds and hundreds of white applicants doing exactly that. It's usually called "packaging", and folks spend a fortune on it. African-Americans don't have the advantage, of course, of passing themselves off as white, millionaire descendants of Jonathan Edwards (though they could be the descendants of Jefferson and Co.), so I think it's great when they use every advantage they can.</p>

<p>As for the sons and daughters of the average Black family with a $33k/year income, well, HYP hasn't gotten around to them yet (and haven't spent a heck of a lot of energy looking.) And it's not because they don't exist: Amherst has found them; Smith has found them; Occidental has found them; USC has found them.</p>

<p>Emerald, there are many reasons for large families. My family is more like that of inner city, poor URMs, I know. And I have gotten many negative comments about our situation. We really could not afford the extra kids we ended up having, and often partook of others' generosity in time, transportation and funds.</p>

<p>"As for gaming the AA system, we know many families who position themselves to look far less affluent than they are. Their kids do not mention the Maine summer camps and equestrian activities on college applications."</p>

<p>I understand now. I don't know what the other kids from our school put on their apps, but I would bet that this isn't happening. I don't think many of the kids from our school do things like this during the summer. It's a VERY unpretentious school. Anyone who drives into the parking lot in a car than was manufactured in the last 5 years is likely to get stares. If you want to blend in, drive an 80s Volvo wagon, dress in Birkenstocks and casual, neutral toned clothing.....and please don't wear makeup. Don't discuss college applications. Rather, discuss what summer programs are available for the students to go to South America to irrigate villages. And whatever you do, for for goodness sake don't bring meat dishes to the pot luck, it won't be touched - tofu is the best bet. Honestly, it's just the best place in the world. It feels to me like someone took a whole group of 60s Berkeley students with PhDs, aged them and put them in this one place (this is the black parents too). Are they going to "game" the system....heck no.....these parents value education too much to do that and the kids really don't need the edge to go where they choose.</p>