<p>Maybe, but damned if it ain't fun.</p>
<p>Orrican, </p>
<p>While I agree that affirmative action vindicates cultures which are anti-intellectual and anti-success, I do have to quibble with you on the argument that athletes shouldn't be given special treatment. Certainly, it irritates me that they are, but we must be pragmatic and remember that for any school, pleasing its alumni is a top priority and that means having a variety of sports teams for those alumni to hoot and holler for and as such, it is extremely important for any school to ensure that those sports teams do not die out by admitting those qualified athletes who will carry them on. As for legacies, the ones who actually got preferential treatment make up a very small percentage of any admitted class and probably do not impact the chances of other applicants very significantly.</p>
<p>Now, ICarGirl, I've heard your side of the story and I hope you don't mind if I debate with it in great detail.</p>
<p>"First of all, I believe that it is in a college's interest to have a diverse student body."</p>
<p>So do I, but through admissions programs which actually promote diversity and don't assume it exists based on the color of one's skin.</p>
<p>"I am never going to know how it feels to be racially profiled, but I did get some sense of the anger it inspires when my closest friend told me her bag had been searched at a local store."</p>
<p>"I know that there are people who think its OK to fly the confederate flag who are not racists."</p>
<p>This, and every other example you cited, could easily be accomplished without affirmative action. It would simply require a college to admit in the hopes of fostering a diversity of viewpoints on campus, which they do anyway.</p>
<p>"Now that is just the benefit those in the majority recieve. For minorities, AA not only gives individuals an opportunity, it will hopefully have the effect of changing the kind of culture that Canaday spoke of, and making achievement more widespread among the Black community. The students graduating from top schools are going to be, for the most part, educated professionals raising their kids in homes where learning is valued, an important societal goal."</p>
<p>Now this, if you'll forgive me, is complete ********. Affirmative action does NOTHING to change the unpleasant culture behind minority failure in schools. Rather, it vindicates it. Think about it, if preserving an awful culture meant the college admissions standards would be lowered for you and your children for as long as that culture existed, would you give up that kind of easy access? I think not. And for that matter, this assumes that the students will actually graduate from those top schools rather than flunk out due to being unqualified to attend in the first place. Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom, in their book "America in Black and White", which is a historical study of affirmative action, show that statistically, even Harvard only retains 80% of its minority students, and it is by far the highest, with the runner-up being your dear school of Princeton with a retention rate of 69%. That means that almost one third of the minorities admitted under AA at Princeton were either incapable of doing the work or somehow unfitted for the Princeton education and if you'll forgive me, what good are their diverse viewpoints if they're not in the school to espouse them?</p>
<p>"And while not everything is white America's fault, the American government does have to acknowledge that it bears at least some responsibility for the current racial inequities in our country."</p>
<p>Oh, I hate it when people make this argument. Ok, maybe forty years ago, the goverment bore "at least some responsibility for the current racial inequities in our country", but frankly, the American Government and the American people have bent over backwards to absolve themselves of that by catering to institutions such as the NAACP and, yes, by instituting affirmative action at a time when it was legitimately close to impossible for minority students to achieve on the same level as white applicants. And you've ignored what I call the Jewish problem. Jews, such as myself, were discriminated against in this country to the same extent as blacks and, with the inception of programs such as pogroms and the holocaus, we have a cultural memory at least as riddled with injustice as the blacks. However, we came to this country and started overrunning schools like Harvard and Yale without some condescending policy making us look better in the eyes of the admissions committee. In fact, according to Jerome Karabel's book "the Chosen", which features the admissions process of Harvard, Princeton and Yale, the colleges were trying to figure out ways to keep us out! Why this success of a persecuted racial minority with racial inequities? Because our culture emphasizes education and the others don't. </p>
<p>"So much for the benefits of AA. Obviously, the main objection t oit is that it is unfair to the white and Asian applicants who would have gotten in if it weren't for the policy. However, while I do feel sorry for those people, I think that the effects of the unfairness are relatively limited."</p>
<p>That's not the main argument against it, actually. The main argument against it is that it achieves an effect counter to its purpose. That is, it encourages reverse discrimination by having the effect you mention and it increases racial divisiveness because of the bitterness which many white, Jewish and Asian applicants feel against minorities less qualified than them who were admitted under affirmative action. And, of course, it vindicates derelict cultural aspects which have to be stamped out for continued success.</p>
<p>Now, it is true that a white applicant might be justified in saying that if he were a URM he would have gotten in. This is somewhat unfair. But, while the applicant might have gotten in as a URM, he would likely still not have gotten in in a world without AA. Consider what would happened if there were no AA. Some minorities would get in anyway - although a significantly smaller number. So, there would be a somewhat greater number of slots open for other students. But most of the people who were rejected with AA would still have been rejected if it didn't exist - because no matter how you admit people, there are too many students and too few spots. In either case, the same number of qualified people are going to have to be rejected - its just that with AA, a white person is more likely to be one of those people. However, the school has increased its diversity without lowering standards.</p>
<p>True, most of the people who would have been rejected under AA would have been rejected anyway, but its pointless and naïve to argue that there is no difference in the quality of the admitted class because of this. Probably, without AA, Harvard would have a 100% minority retention rate because all the minorities there would be perfectly capable of doing the work. I also fail to see why AA is necessary when all colleges use diversity in their decisions, AA or no. </p>
<p>A black student from a priveleged background will benefit from AA if he is already qualified - he will be one of my "group 2" people. But if he doesn't have the stats, he won't get in just because he is black. A student with lower stats who comes from a disadvantaged background might be considered, while a suburban white kid wouldn't be. However, a white student from a disadvantaged background would also have the kind of "hook" that could counteract some transcript deficiencies. Yes, the black student would still be more desirabale, but, just as in group 2, that doesn't mean that black students are admitted with stats that no white or Asian could get away with. Again, just as in the earlier case, the difference in that what for a white applicant might be a toss-up is for a black applicant a safer bet - it isn't as if they are letting in totally unqualified people.</p>
<p>This is, again, naïve. Yes, some anecdotal evidence suggests that theres not much of a difference, but those anecdotes are drawn from the applicant pools at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and MIT, where the difference in applicants probably isnt that significant. However, just because the best schools in the country have found a workable way to use affirmative action doesnt justify it as a policy. What about the B-list and C-list schools who dont have such a fine crop of students to choose from? You bet theyre going to take anything that breathes and isnt white just to ensure diversity and those students are going to be underqualified and most likely drop out as a result. This isnt assuring diversity, its tempting people with something they arent qualified to have and then crushing them when they realize they cant handle it.</p>
<p>So, to recap a rambling post, AA results in a limited number of over-represented majority students not getting spots. However, it does not result in a substantially weaker class, nor does [it] reward the undeserving.</p>
<p>Again, this is only true at schools who have their pick of applicants like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and MIT. Most schools are not so lucky and as such, they have to take students of lesser quality. Some schools also have more extreme affirmative action policies which drop just short of the policy which the Supreme court held unconstitutional in Reagents of the University of California at Davis v. Bakke. Besides, if the difference in quality between admitted minority students and admitted non-minority students is so small, then why do we need affirmative action in the first place? Isnt its role to compensate for social injustice? Well, wheres that injustice if the applicant pools are slowly becoming equal?</p>
<p>I too am sorry for a long and perhaps vituperative post, but affirmative action, abortion and religion in the public sphere are the three issues I feel strongest about. As such, a bit of my passion may have seeped into this post.</p>