Minorities?

rattle1 · October 20, 2004, 11:02am

Voronwe said,

"Once again: private, elite, selective schools ARE BUILDING COMMUNITIES and the fact that they are private means they can build those communities any way they see fit. Because there are thousands upon thousands of high scorers, SCORES ARE NOT THAT IMPORTANT -- one assumes that everyone who applies can do the work, BUT WHO WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE is the true question."

I say again,

[No one advocated admitting students on GPAs and test scores or numbers by being "numbers driven". That's the biggest mistake. Again, you are sterotyping Asian American applicants by inferring that Asian American applicants are only admitted on that basis, but that is the furtest from the truth with your anecdotes in your last post. Internal studies have proven otherwise, in that Asian Americans, not only have the highest test scores and GPAs and take the most advanced courses, but also meet or exceed the other holistic criteria for admissions which include creativity, motivition, high work ethic, special talents including sports (especially non-contact sports where Asians are well represented among the 41 varsity sports at Haravard), and the overcoming of obstacles such as poverty, culture and language differences and prejudice, stereotyping and even racism from the majority population.]

Please reread my previous posts.

The beneficiarcies of race based AA at Harvard are lower performing middle and upper-middle class blacks admitted with lowered standards, 2/3s of whom are not even descendants of black American slaves, but of Carribbean and African immigrants. Race based AA does not benefit underachieving poorer lower class blacks, AA's intended target, but gives preferential treatment to underacheiving and underperforming affluent blacks who are admitted with lowered standards based solely on race. This simply wrong, unfair, unjust and immoral.

Please answer this simple question,

"Why should these AFFLUENT blacks deserve preference over poor whites and Asian Ams? Why?"

The lower class blacks are left out in the cold with this demented, unjust and unfair policy of race-based AA. The achievement gaps are not being closed between the races.

The biggest little well-kept secret in this scenario is the fact that the richest and most affluent blacks with family incomes of over 100k/year and parents with college and graduate degrees, underperform and underachieve when compareed to the poorest Asian Ams and whites with family incomes of less than 30k/year and parents with less than a high diploma. Also, poor Asians even outperform affluent whites. It is all RELATIVE.

Think about this fact. Many are in denial of this statement above. All studies have proven the above statement.

voronwe · October 20, 2004, 11:15am

Rattle - re: your question about wealthy blacks:

I repeat: "If a school thinks society needs more black doctors to serve as role models to the black community, what's it to you if they come from wealthy backgrounds?"

Also, many, MANY black students have stellar scores that could easily compete with anyone else's. If the AVERAGE is brought down because some blacks are admitted with lower scores, it doesn't mean that blacks afren't qualified, even by your very, very, very narrow definition of "qualified."

As for who outperforms who --- who cares? Does the Planet Earth run by "performance?" My husband makes $300,000 a year. Does that make him "better" than people who "perform" less well in terms of money? Does it make him "worse" than people who "perform" better? Life isn't about "performing!!!!"

I am the white suburban mother of a son, and white males from certain over-represented affluent suburbs have trouble getting into top schools. But I STILL have no trouble. What is YOUR stake in this?

mini · October 20, 2004, 11:18am

I met with the Admissions Director at Smith on Monday to do some consulting with them about homeschoolers. I don't need to report about that here, but we had an interesting discussion about test scores. It seems that one of Ruth Simmons' last acts as President of Smith was to convene a committee of the faculty and the office of institutional research. The concern was that the Admissions Office was weighing test scores too heavily, and that this made it more difficult for Smith to meet its decades' long institutional commitment to economic diversity (it is the most economically diverse prestige LAC or ivy league school in the country except for Occidental - as measured by Pell Grant recipients), and to ethnic diversity. Two questions were examined: was there a link between SAT scores of attending students and their academic success, and did overuse of the scores work against Smith's commitments.

The answer to both questions was a resounding yes. Looking at a decades' worth of data, they couldn't find an association between entering SAT scores (which at Smith are quite wide) and academic performance. And, yes, over-reliance on the scores did make it more difficult for Smith to meet its institutional commitments. As a result, the Admissions Office has been officially instructed to heavily de-emphasize test scores, and look for other evidence of academic caliber, strong passionate interests, strong writing skills, and ability to benefit most from a Smith education. She now reports that, contrary to even five years ago, the use of test scores - either SAT Is or IIs - almost never makes or breaks an application.

dadx · October 20, 2004, 11:19am

Just to throw a wrench into this from an underrepresentation standpoint....... at Harvard, Yale, and many other elite schools the most underrepresented group is the majority group in the country.....non-jewish caucasians. This group, which accounts for somewhere around 2/3 of the nations population, makes up only about 1/3 or so of the students at H and Y. This is a stunning under-representation for the majority group in the country and is difficult to explain, in my opinion. One wonders how the schools are able to look at this fact without questioning what they are doing and how they are doing it.

mini · October 20, 2004, 11:26am

Sorry. The most underrrepresented group, by far (it isn't even close) is poor people - those at the 35th percentile in income or lower. At all 3 schools, it is fewer than 10% of students - at H. it is 6.8%.

rattle1 · October 20, 2004, 11:30am

Vorone said,

[re: your question about wealthy blacks:
I repeat: "If a school thinks society needs more black doctors to serve as role models to the black community, what's it to you if they come from wealthy backgrounds?"]

Again, it is all relative.

Conisder this from Jay Matthews column:

<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26499-2004Oct12?language=printer%5B/url%5D">http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26499-2004Oct12?language=printer</a>

washingtonpost.com
Should Colleges Have Quotas for Asian Americans?

By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer

[Chin said if he had the power to change the admission policies of schools that discriminate in this way, he would let them continue to give preference to athletes, musicians, alumni children and any other groups the college wished to favor. And he would admit lower-scoring students whose parents, like his, did not have much money. But he would abolish all preferences based on race and ethnicity.

He noted the recent estimate by Harvard humanities professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. that two thirds of blacks at Harvard were not descendants of American slaves, but the middle class children of relatively recent immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa. "Why should they deserve admission with lowered standards (relatively speaking) based solely on the color of their skin over a high achieving Asian American living in a Chinatown ghetto or a Black ghetto (many Asians live in Black and Latino ghettos) or a poor white from the slums of NYC?" Chin said.

The solution to the problem of lower average achievement among African Americans and Hispanics is not "the Band-Aid approach of race-based affirmative action," Chin said. "It is solved by improving the K-12 schools for the lower economic classes which are disproportionately Black and Latino."]

Voronwe, you improve the k-12 schools for the lower economic classes which are disproportionately black and latino. Then, you have many more black role models who are from their OWN backgrounds serving their OWN communities, which are comoprised of the descendants of Afro American slaves, and not the rich affluent lower performing
and underacheiving descendents of recent Carribean and African immigrants. They are not the intended targets of race based AA and this policy solves absolutely nothing. Instead, it exacerbates strife between the races with achievement gaps between the races widening even more in recent years. This race based policy solves nothing, but cause more problems.

momsdream · October 20, 2004, 11:30am

"Why should these AFFLUENT blacks deserve preference over poor whites and Asian Ams? Why?"

How many affluent African Americans were admitted to the Ivies last year?

rattle1 · October 20, 2004, 11:53am

Momsdream asked,

["Why should these AFFLUENT blacks deserve preference over poor whites and Asian Ams? Why?"...How many affluent African Americans were admitted to the Ivies last year?]

Again, from Matthews column which is directly fro Harvard Prof. "Skip" Gates' report, "He noted the recent estimate by Harvard humanities professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. that two thirds of blacks at Harvard were not descendants of American slaves, but the middle class children of relatively recent immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa."

In answer to your question, momsdream, the vast majority of the blacks admitted to the Ivies were "affluent". A miniscule number came the poorest black families, who don't even graduate from high sch, let alone, go to college or Harvard.

The explanation for this fact is:

The biggest little well-kept secret in this scenario is the fact that the richest and most affluent blacks with family incomes of over 100k/year and parents with college and graduate degrees, underperform and underachieve when compareed to the poorest Asian Ams and whites with family incomes of less than 30k/year and parents with less than a high diploma. Also, poor Asians even outperform affluent whites. It is all RELATIVE.

There are simply not enough lower economic class blacks who qualify for college, let alone Harvard. Therefore the only way to admit blacks to any college, including Harvard, is to admit the lower performing and underachieving blacks with lowered standards and race preferences from the middle class and upper class blacks, 2/3s of whom are not even descendants of Afro American slaves, the intended beneficiaries of racial preferences. The Harvard blacks are mostly the children of Carribbean and African immigrants. They never sufferred the injustices of American slavery and the Jim Crow Laws. Why should these econically and educationally ADVANTAGED blacks be given preferential based solely on race??

jamimom · October 20, 2004, 11:56am

I am not sure where you get the data that Asians score higher in the holistic part of the admissions process. I have info from 120 kids right now with more than half of them Asian. The Asian group wins hands down on any academic review. But I have trouble diffentiating one kid from the other in that group, just looking at the profile whereas the un Asian group is quite diverse. There are a handful of kids (mostly Jewish) whose resumes fit right with the Asian group of kids, and I have found that they have about the same acceptance rates as the Asians. As a great supporter of music, particularly the strings and classical music, I put a lot of weight into the phenomonal music resumes that these kids have, but colleges just don't need that many pianists or violinists. As for athletes, I don't have a single Asian kid who can play college level sports even in Div 3. This pattern has repeated itself over 10 years. Perusing HPY athletic sites, I do not see many Asian names on the NCAA teams which are where the athletic card becomes an issue. Hardly any in the sports that are particularly important to the schools. Recruiting for cross country, gymnastics, tennis is low grade compared to football, hockey and basketball. So I am not sure where you are getting the holist reportcards for kids. Any of the books written by former adcoms have specifically commented on the low scores Asian kids get in that area which sink a number of them in the admissions process. That is not to say that there are not a number of Asians in sports, or that there are none who stand out in them. But the numbers are just not there, particularly in the sports where there is the most recruiting. Also, when I look at the college book at my son's prep school which does accurately identify the student's ethnic group and tracks 10 years worth of college applications and results for kids, the kids who have a significantly higher accept rate, given their academic numbers are the athletes and URMS. Though legacies also have an advantage, it is more difficult to see as many academic discrepancies in those admits--that appears to be more of a tip, at least at this school. I did not see many "hooks" indicated in the Asian students, in fact hardly any. And for kids without "hooks", it is difficult to gain entry into HPY. Those kids, white or Asian, without hooks of some sort did not have as high of an acceptance rate to the elite schools. Playing an instrument unless you are at a very high level or intend to study performance is not considered a hook in general.

I am really interested in the Brown study. I do have a strong contact at Brown that I have known for years. I have always considered Brown the "quirky" ivy that has often counted the holistic side of the applicant more heavily than the academic profile. Kids who have unusual activities, are activists seem to have a stronger track record there.

There has been a prevailing sentiment or suspicion that the holistic appraissal is slanted to eliminate an Asian majority at elite colleges. Whether that is true or not, I cannot say. But I see that the way the recomendations are read, the activities valued do not favor a number of kids, including many Asians. My third son falls into this category as he is wired for math and sciences, is quiet, keeps to himself, not a leader but excells in things like chess and math competitions. He is also an excellent musician but does not choose to go into that discipline and will probably not continue orchestra beyond high school. Like the valedictorian (who is Asian) of S2's class, he would be an academic 10, but a 5 at best for ECs that a college wants. There are just too many kids like him. S2, on the other hand, is a very dicey academic 6-8, but would be an 8-10 with his captainships, performing arts resume, leadership activities in highschool. He interviews wonderfully whereas his brother has trouble keeping a convesation going. His essays resound with interesting stories, whereas his brother has trouble coming up with a topic. I can see that there are many more like my academic son applying to the top schools, than my charismatic one, so who do you think the colleges would pick if the academics pass muster?

I will share an observation that jumps out from my records. Kids that fit the "Asian profile", high academics, good but no hooks ECs, tend to do much, much better applying early. Even if they do not apply ED, if they get that app out before the December crunch, the accept rate is much higher. I checked the trend against S's schools College Book, and the same situation exists there. Apparently when adcoms start the season, they are much more generous with the piano/violin impressive resumes and the laid back ECs when coupled with a great academic review. As more apps are reviewed, there are simply so many of these types, and the majors tend to cluster as well in the maths, engineering, sciences, that they simply cannot accept them all. So later in the process, it is more difficult to get in for that reason alone. Also reading the same essays repeatedly gets tiring, and I have found that the Asian kids have 3 topics that seem to come up all of the time--their pushy parents, the cultural adjustments, and the community service story. Out of 60 kids this year, I am dead on with these 3 themes, and they all think they are original. We exchanged essays one year and the kids were shocked at how alike their essays were. There is more variation among the non Asian kids, I can assure you. So while the season is new, the chances are much better, but a bottleneck quickly appears when the apps come rolling in, is my take on this . I think it is this bottleneck that accounts for many of the outstanding Asian students who do not get into the elite schools.

rattle1 · October 20, 2004, 12:20pm

Momsdream said,

[Based on the very small number of blacks going to college, I would hesitate to think that blacks are the crux of your problems with college admissions. But, if I was an adcom and I read this as your viewpoint, I'd reject you too.]

You have no understanding of my point. I never said that "blacks are the crux of your (my) problem". Again, the crux of the problem is race based admissions in this zero sum game of admissions to the elite colleges. Whites don't lose, because once race is elimnated from the admissions process, whites did not gain in numbers, but remain the same, proving that whites did not pay a big price. Asian American numbers did increase with the elimination of race as a factor, proving that Asian Americans were the biggest losers in race based admissions. Black numbers of course went down with the elimination of race as a factor, proving that the difference in black admission numbers was due to the race factor and preferential treatment. Therfeore, admissions must be race neutal. This was proven at the U.of Texas-Austin when they eliminated race based AA, removing race as a factor. The Asian numbers increased and the whites remained the same, while blacks decreased. This was also the case at UC Berkeley when it banned the use of race in admissions. And I will assure you, that this would be the case in the Ivies and the elites if race and ethnicity were not used as factors in admissions. In the case of Asians, race is use to reject applicants, not because they are not qualified by any criteria they use (even not considering test scores and GPAs), but they are rejected based on "stereotyes" of Asian Am being one-dimensional and outright bias and prejudice against the Asian Am applicant. Studies at Brown and Stanford have verified this.

rattle1 · October 20, 2004, 12:25pm

Jamimon said,

[I am not sure where you get the data that Asians score higher in the holistic part of the admissions process. I have info from 120 kids right now with more than half of them Asian. The Asian group wins hands down on any academic review. But I have trouble diffentiating one kid from the other in that group, just looking at the profile whereas the un Asian group is quite diverse. There are a handful of kids (mostly Jewish) whose resumes fit right with the Asian group of kids, and I have found that they have about the same acceptance rates as the Asians. As a great supporter of music, particularly the strings and classical music, I put a lot of weight into the phenomonal music resumes that these kids have, but colleges just don't need that many pianists or violinists. As for athletes, I don't have a single Asian kid who can play college level sports even in Div 3. This pattern has repeated itself over 10 years. ]

Again, you are dealing with your own personal anecdotes and biases re-enforcing the racist stereotypes of Asian American applicants. You don't have any data or studies back up your claims. Again studies were done at Brown and Stanford regarding this issue, and this is what that found as I had stated in my previous post. Review my posts. In them, you will find the two references that I had quoted from Stanford and from Brown. Please read them and enlighten yourself.

voronwe · October 20, 2004, 12:30pm

Jamimom, Rattle will HATE this but my experience is exactly the same as yours over a 15 year period. Everyone please forgive me - this isn't racism, it is statistical fact about the 300 or so kids that I have worked with in various capacities including Ivy interviewer over the past 15 years.

I see by my files that over 90% of the Asians I interviewed were going to major in math, engineering, science, or music. I agree with Jamimom that a bottleneck of these kids in the RD round could be a problem.

In counseling, I see by my files that (in Jamimom's words) "pushy parents" and "cultural adjustments" were the ONLY two essay topics (I didn't get any "community service essays," though of course every kid, Asian or not, listed community service. However heartfelt an individual's essay might be, after reading two dozen nearly identical essays in a week, my eyes glaze over, try as I might to approach each one with fresh eyes.

None was a recruited athlete. One specified he might try walking on to a sports team.

Of the students who had out-of-the-box ECs (such as having sailed 140-foot boats in the South Pacific - just one example!) rather than the standard school ECs or prizes), not one was Asian.

I think (from my experience) that you are right - they fare better in the ED round; when they don't get in, it may very well be because there is a limit to how many science/math/music majors will be taken in any one year.

Please - no flames for "stereotyping." There will be MANY anecdotes of students who DON'T fit what Jamimom and I saw. But I cannot speak about people I don't know - only those I knew as an Ivy interviewer and college counselor.

I firmly believe that an intererst in a holistic appraisal is emphatically NOT designed to keep Asians out. It is designed for very positive reasons.

Screaming that this is "anecdotal" begs the question. All I have to go by are these three hundred students. It does not change any study anyone else did --- but it certainly explains something about why THIS group fared as it did.

momsdream · October 20, 2004, 12:31pm

Rattle said: "Again, from Matthews column which is directly fro Harvard Prof. "Skip" Gates' report, "He noted the recent estimate by Harvard humanities professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. that two thirds of blacks at Harvard were not descendants of American slaves, but the middle class children of relatively recent immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa."

{moderators: we need more text options - such as color or "quote" text}

Rattle, this is true. And, from what I see, blacks of many different origins consider themselves as one race. However, there are debates on both sides of this coin....... with both viewpoints bieng from within the black community. Like everyone else, rich blacks just get richer....and send their kids off to the top prep schools in order to stake a place in the game. (I've heard this argued both ways, BTW...some say affluent blacks don't) And I trust that college administrators are talented enough to consider this when planning their "community". I suspect that any school with such high numbers of second-generation black internationals (as I think most of them are, at this point) would look for a balance of multi-generational American born blacks (often probably the less affluent of the group).
In a society where one race feels especially insecure, it's going to be hard to separate blacks into native and non (mentally, for blacks), I guess.

Why don't you level-set affluent "affluent" for the sake of this thread?

Rattle said : "The biggest little well-kept secret in this scenario is the fact that the richest and most affluent blacks with family incomes of over 100k/year and parents with college and graduate degrees, underperform and underachieve when compareed to the poorest Asian Ams and whites with family incomes of less than 30k/year and parents with less than a high diploma. Also, poor Asians even outperform affluent whites."

Wow....so there is something wrong in the educational foundation of the group of blacks you describe. A group of people, based on skin color, constantly underachieve no matter how financially secure and educated in primary and high school years. And so, the students who are applying to schools like harvard are applying within the highest test score and GPA brackets (though lower than Asians). So, I (Mrs. Adcom) adjust my levels down a notch so that I can skim the top of this group (just enough to make any slight significantce on my campus since their app numbers are so low anyway) and invite them in. After all, there is something very interesting about this group of consistent underperformers and I owe it to my global community to try to get under this issue (I'm a school of high learning, right?)

Rattle continues: There are simply not enough lower economic class blacks who qualify for college, let alone Harvard. Therefore the only way to admit blacks to any college, including Harvard, is to admit the lower performing and underachieving blacks with lowered standards and race preferences from the middle class and upper class blacks, 2/3s of whom are not even descendants of Afro American slaves, the intended beneficiaries of racial preferences.

Rattle, you're still missing it. The INTENDED benefit of so-called racial preferences at these colleges is not to "right a wrong". The benefit is the vision of a better community for living - for everyone involved. These schools are private. They are making this as a choice...not a mandate. "Diversity" is a buzzword that campuses throw around because they know it's attractive to most people. If you start thinking, for a minute, about the benefit to the overall community instead of the potential personal impact to one group you'll see that although this seems unfair to you, it makes sense for the schools.

You've obviously been very upset about this for a while (given your quick references to articles).

What would you suggest black americans do about this?

voronwe · October 20, 2004, 12:33pm

QUOTE: Rattle, you're still missing it. The INTENDED benefit of so-called racial preferences at these colleges is not to "right a wrong". The benefit is the vision of a better community for living - for everyone involved. These schools are private. They are making this as a choice...not a mandate. "Diversity" is a buzzword that campuses throw around because they know it's attractive to most people. If you start thinking, for a minute, about the benefit to the overall community instead of the potential personal impact to one group you'll see that although this seems unfair to you, it makes sense for the schools. UNQUOTE

Amen, and thank you!

jamimom · October 20, 2004, 12:48pm

I am very interested in the information for Brown as I said before. I would like to see any study that actually rates the holistic part of students in the elite schools and then breaks them down by race. I have yet to see that, though people talk about what MIGHT be there. I have contacted my friend at Brown to see what is kicking there, as I am curious. I am not really must going by personal anecdotes as I do have a rather sizeable group of kids that I work with that I do not seek out each year, and about half are Asian. As I have been in about 4 cities in the last 10 years, the group is rather random, and I am just a SAT Writing tutor collecting data and helping with the college process. I am not just bringing up individual kids here and there when the sample size is as large as what I have. But I am very curious as to any release of holistic data and ratings as I have never seen this before. It is generally all talk and opinion. Let me know where I can get the studies done at Brown. As you know, there are studies, and there are studies. My mind is very open in this area, as I have investigated claims of this sort before, some, unfortunately true. But not in this larger arena, and I would be most interested in this info. As I said, adcoms that have written their books and made their comments seem to have the opposite opinion about the holistic ratings from what you say. And I did check the athletic sites for Asian athletes, and though there are indeed some standouts, the numbers are not there. Check yourself and do a quick count. The rosters are right there, and it is football season now, the sport that has the most athletes and the most clout in the ivy recruiting scene. I don't see the Asians.

I have seen many editorial and arguments, including the Jay Mathews exchange. But it always comes down to the same thingl--academics are only half the resume. To bring up what the ACCEPTED kids are doing in college is not the same as evaluating those kids who are APPLYING to college that do not get into the elite schools even with a top academic profile. I am sure that the kids in HPY are very active in the many activities; that is why they got in. I just don't see it in highschool.

I do believe if outright discrimination is occuring, a lawsuit should be filed on behalf of these students who are so blatantly being discriminated against. But if the discrimination is the result of favoritism of other groups of student, that is not going to fly. The Supreme Court has endorsed giving URMs a holistic review that can override an academic profile that is not as strong as those of other kids. Athletes in sports that are important to the school have a strong hook, that again overrides a weaker academic profile. Once the academic review is done, legacies have an edge even if point for point they may be weaker academically. Kids from certain geographic areas are disadvantaged since schools like geographic diversity. And overprescribed majors get the bum rap at admissions. None of these things qualify as discrimination in a legal sense though they are discriminatory in semantic sense.

Your tone sounds very familiar to me, you are not by any chance banned from this forum, are you? Although your case on the discrimination of Asians and the inappropriateness of affirmative action brings up some excellent points, there is a tone to your arguments that makes me very uncomfortable. Most of us on this forum are very open to ideas even when we do not agree entirely with them, but for some reason I sense a rabid mission in your posts without the good will that most posters seem to have. Perhaps I am wrong.

rattle1 · October 20, 2004, 1:00pm

Voronwe said,

"Rattle, you're still missing it. The INTENDED benefit of so-called racial preferences at these colleges is not to "right a wrong". The benefit is the vision of a better community for living - for everyone involved. These schools are private. They are making this as a choice...not a mandate. "Diversity" is a buzzword that campuses throw around because they know it's attractive to most people. If you start thinking, for a minute, about the benefit to the overall community instead of the potential personal impact to one group you'll see that although this seems unfair to you, it makes sense for the schools. UNQUOTE"

Simply put, you are missing the point. DIVERSITY TRANSCEND RACE. One can achieve a MOST diverse class with ALL factors of admission that I had mentioned, with out race. I explained this to you before. The use of race violates the 14th amendment and it is put on the back burner with the recent US Supreme Court decision because of political correctness. The jury is still out on this one. Rest assure, there will be more cases on this issue.

The US Supreme Court recently ok'd the use of race as a factor in the U.of Michagan Law School case (not in the undergrad case) and justified it by racial "diversity", a synomym for quotas/goals. It did outlaw numerical "quotas" in the undergrad college case, as it did not allow quotas in the Bakke vs. U.of Cal. School of Medicine at Davis, more than 25 years ago.

However, the swing vote in this 5 to 4 vote, in favor of the use of race as a factor, Justice O'Conner, qualified her vote by saying that the use of race should not be for more than 25 years. Well, it has been more than 40 years and nothing has changed. The academic performance gaps between the races have widen. The original intended purposed of race-based AA in admissions is to close the educational gaps between the races, something which it has miserably failed in. Of course, the justification for its continued us is for "diversitY", whose benefits have been proven. In fact, race based admissions have caused problems negating any benefits that it may provide.

momsdream · October 20, 2004, 1:02pm

Also, please remember that many, many affluent american blacks were educated in HBCUs and feel a connection to schools such as Howard, Hampton, Spelman and, of course, Morehouse. Based onw what I have witnessed of many, many (thousands) of affluent black teens, they aren't looking to go to Harvard and the likes. I many of these affluent homes, it's still more desirable to attend the aforementioned black schools. At the same time, the African and Caribbean black families don't have a connection to the historically black schools are are often on the "outside" of the wealthiest black circles (unfortunately). At the college level, I believe these two groups branch off into two different directions. Harvard is not a typical top choice school for wealthy blacks. Could this explain the high numbers of Africans and Caribbeans at Ivies?

Before you go to check, I'll say that the SAT medians at those wildly popular black schools are, in fact, lower than the scores of the Ivies. So, perhaps the speculation could be that affluent blacks aren't incented to perform at Ivy level because Ivy level isn't what makes their parents beam and their friends give a "pound" (fist punching - for the ebonically challenged of the group :). I would bet that this historical trending, which is surely on the minds of conscious adcoms, makes the recruitment of talented blacks more of a challenge than in ost other groups....because there is another set of unique universities postioned for the #1 spot with most of the race. What other american group can claim this?

rattle1 · October 20, 2004, 1:03pm

Correction of last post:

"Of course, the justification for its continued use is for "diversitY", whose benefits have NOT been proven. In fact, race based admissions have caused more problems negating any benefits that it may provide."

rattle1 · October 20, 2004, 1:22pm

Momsdream said,

[Also, please remember that many, many affluent american blacks were educated in HBCUs and feel a connection to schools such as Howard, Hampton, Spellman and, of course, Morehouse. Based onw what I have witnessed of many, many (thousands) of affluent black teens, they aren't looking to go to Harvard and the likes. I many of these affluent homes, it's still more desirable to attend the aforementioned black schools. At the same time, the African and Caribbean black families don't have a connection to the historically black schools are are often on the "outside" of the wealthiest black circles (unfortunately). At the college level, I believe these two groups branch off into two different directions. Harvard is not a typical top choice school for wealthy blacks. Could this explain the high numbers of Africans and Caribbeans at Ivies?]

I don't think so, when you consider the fact that "The biggest little well-kept secret in this scenario is the fact that the richest and most affluent blacks with family incomes of over 100k/year and parents with college and graduate degrees, underperform and underachieve when compareed to the poorest Asian Ams and whites with family incomes of less than 30k/year and parents with less than a high diploma. Also, poor Asians even outperform affluent whites."

How do you explain this? Who is or what's at fault to cause this? It is the k-12 school schools, self-destructive black culture, lack of reverance for education, or some dep psycholgical barrier for blacks which is insurmountable? How can we, as Americans, close this glaring RACIAL GAP in performance and attainment. "Diversity" does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in closing this gap. "Diversity" is a cope-out excuse for advocates of race based admissions for lack of any thing better.

sheeprun · October 20, 2004, 1:25pm

Why is it that 99% of the "hot" threads I encounter consist of a series of posts in which each user QUOTES the previous user? Isn't it possible to discuss a subject WITHOUT quoting a previous thought---and then attacking it?

What might work well for high school debate competition... does not work well in a friendly conversational forum such as College Confidential.

Play nice!

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