<p>@Philo,
</p>
<p>Next year will be the 150 anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Since then, we’ve had 2 World Wars and have elected a black president. For how many more centuries are you going to invoke “slavery”?</p>
<p>You are an outstandingly smart dude, Philo. Shouldn’t you feel burned by having your solid credentials questioned because of AA?</p>
<p>In my view, the most interesting thing about Unz’s article is his point that AA’s have unfairly been the face of supposedly discriminatory AA when other groups/statuses have actually gotten larger advantages that displace more candidates with better objective credentials. </p>
<p>GMTplus7,</p>
<p>Yes, the emancipation proclamation was 150 years ago, but as you probably know it was a war measure that “freed” slaves in the southern states over whom Lincoln lacked any control. After Lincoln’s death, Andrew Johnson took over and in an effort to appease the south took most of the teeth out of reconstruction legislation. Thus, began all sorts of subtle (and not so subtle) discrimination against AA’s that existed at a minimum until Brown and the later gains of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Even then and these civil rights gains, took several decades to implement and other groups responded by leaving town (see Detroit). As a result, most neighborhoods today have de jure segregation (which is why Texas 10% plan can achieve some diversity). </p>
<p>No other group in my view has faced such extensive discrimination (as well as issues that may or may not be chalked up to discrimination such as poor public schools) over so many years and this has undoubtedly held AA’s back. </p>
<p>As for the stigma to all AA’s, yes that is an issue because many AA’s would get admitted into top schools without it. But would they go without any nucleus of AA’s already there? With AA there are always winners and losers and that is one reason it remains such a hot button issue today. Nevertheless, I think the pro’s greatly outweigh the cons, which in my view have been exaggerated especially the impact on “better qualified candidates”. An article by Richard Espenshade of Princeton on the Opportunity Costs of Affirmative Action (will post article shortly) shows AA displaces at most 2-3% white/asian candidates. As noted in the article, legacy and athletic preferences displace about the same amount. Thus, in my view, the pros of AA greatly outweigh the cons. </p>
<p>Tp weigh this ask yourself would you rather have your kids go to a cruddy public school system in a dangeorus area with few educational role models and receive AA preferences or attend a terrific suburban HS where almost everyone goes to college. I think most would choose the latter.</p>
<p>Here’s the Espenshade article I noted above.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/~tje/files/Opportunity%20Cost%20of%20Admission%20Preferences%20Espenshade%20Chung%20June%202005.pdf[/url]”>http://www.princeton.edu/~tje/files/Opportunity%20Cost%20of%20Admission%20Preferences%20Espenshade%20Chung%20June%202005.pdf</a></p>
<p>@muck,
</p>
<p>I don’t want to turn this into a contest over which racial group has been treated the worst. But recall that 67 years ago, in modern times, one racial group of U.S. citizens actually got interned in concentration camps on the basis of their race (the Caucasian German-Americans didn’t), and across the ocean, that same racial group got 2 atom bombs dropped on them. </p>
<p>That rates as pretty $hitty treatment in my book.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You are 100% right. My son’s SAT score was was south of 1200 (-1 std dev) at age 13 at one of those cruddy schools. </p>
<p>After graduating from that cruddy school, he attended a mainstream competitive high school, became a National Merit Semifinalist and scored over 2100 SAT/ 210 PSAT (+2 std dev?). </p>
<p>At the cruddy school, in contrast, there has not been a single National Merit semifinalist in 5 years! So, there is no way on earth anyone is going to convince me that schools do not make a difference. I do not think he was a 1 in 5000+ in his cruddy school system who was going to make a National Merit semifinalist.</p>
<p>This is a kid who was earning Cs in freshman year at his top high school, so he was clearly academically deficient when he started high school. Now he is earning straight As in senior year taking 6 AP courses, has good SAT/ PSAT scores and has a 750 in math II subject test. I am pretty sure there were other kids at his old school who would have done equally well if they were given the opportunities he got. Therefore, I have no problem in believing that given opportunities in college they could do equally well as my child or at least had the potential to do so.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Germany would likely have had nuclear weapons dropped on them if it had not already been defeated, since Germany was initially the highest priority Axis opponent. Japan was the only major Axis power still fighting by the time the nuclear weapons were ready for use.</p>
<p>Worth noting is that, in 1945, the effects of fallout and radioactive contamination were underestimated. Some plans existed to use nuclear weapons to clear defending Axis troops from areas to be invaded by Allied troops.:eek:</p>
<p>Well he clearly has one advantage that not every URM in those cruddy schools has. Look at what sort of parent he has. That probably gave him a secure enough base and the support he needed that he was able to recover and launch in a better HS. It doesn’t happen to everyone. In my 10th grader’s ArtMetals/Glass class, a very popular class at our mixed demographic school, and his only non-honors/AP class, the URMs are all breaking stuff and flunking because they goof off and don’t finish their projects, while the Caucs/Asians are just so thrilled to get to work with all these cool materials and tools, they can’t believe the way these kids act. The URMS at his school just lack a large perspective, are trapped in their heads. Parents make all the difference at that level of need. So YOU can take a lot of credit. At my son’s elementary school the PTO tried to engage the URM’s by offering free bus rides/pizza/translators for school events and meetings. It didn’t work very well, so then they started offering some of the events and meetings at the URMs local community center so they could easily walk. Guess who showed up at those meetings? I particularly remember one boy I tutored there in math, a really bright kid who sometimes balked and choked on the problems, though I was sure he could do them. I talked with him sometimes about what was holding him back. Didn’t he want to grow up and go to college and have options in his life? He’d give me that ‘stupid-white-lady’ eye-roll and explain to me how there are a lot of people he knows,and whom I most assuredly did not know, who don’t think college is so great or want to go there at all. My D’s GS troop included and sponsored an AA girl form her school. She had a birthday party for the girls at her apt. and my D came home holding her head vowing never to go there again. The adults were screeching and fighting the whole time, radio and TVs blaring at top volume in every room. And there was no cake to top it off! Total confusion, no program or activities or food. The girl told my D that it’s always like that there, noise still going when she goes to bed at night, if she wakes up to go to bathroom at 2 am. No set dinnertime. Crazy. Those kids would come to school in the morning with cans of diet soda but having had no breakfast, had to eat at school because no real food at home.</p>
<p>GMTplus7,</p>
<p>Undeniable re what you say about the concentration camps and Jews. The same argument – albeit on a slightly less horrific scale – could be made for the Japanese interned in California. The difference though from an AA stand point is that before and after those horrible events both of those groups had educational opprtunties and had not been denied basic rights (at least in the US) for generation after generation like AAs.</p>
<p>^Equally importantly, the AA have no religious, linguistic or cultural identity of their own that links them to their past in Africa. That is not the case with us Asians or the Jews. There is also very little dating, intermarriage and socializing with AAs among whites. The frats and even the cafeterias in colleges seem divided along racial lines. I was shocked when I saw if for the first time as a foreign student. America is not a colorblind society yet.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>My post invoked both slavery and what came after it, but I’ll stop doing that after there stops being an academic gulf between blacks and everyone else specifically because of the things I’m invoking.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Don’t start a war that you can’t finish</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I agree, parents make a difference. I believe there is a study that suggests an academic gap already exists when kids begin elementary school at age 6. Another study I think suggests that academic skills do not improve much after age 13, rising from 50 to 85 percentile or about one standard deviation by age 17. So, given his Duke TIP score, we could expect our son to be somewhere about 1500 on the SAT by senior year. Certainly we encouraged our child to read and learn. However, this was the type of upbringing that I believe, most kids in the top 5% at his elementary and middle school were getting. His mediocre Duke TIP scores and freshman high school grades, I believe, suggest he was not getting anything special at home before age 13. Most of my son’s academic growth came in high school, I do not think it was really us the parents. I think it was more the environment in school and the smart kids he met there and his teachers that influenced him. I can only imagine how much better it would have been for him, if he had been identified in KG or elementary school and was given these opportunities.</p>
<p>muckdogs, whenever someone posts an Espenshade reference, I like to make sure folks know about this little nugget. I think it’s interesting. This is from the original paper. </p>
<p>“Admission Preferences for Minority Students, Athletes, and Legacies at Elite Universities”
<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/~tje/files/webAdmission%20Preferences%20Espenshade%20Chung%20Walling%20Dec%202004.pdf[/url]”>http://www.princeton.edu/~tje/files/webAdmission%20Preferences%20Espenshade%20Chung%20Walling%20Dec%202004.pdf</a></p>
<p>“The penalty for scoring less than 1200 on the SAT is
significantly greater for African-American and Hispanic students than the
penalty for white students who score less than 1200 (Model 2). Similarly,
the reward (i.e., increased likelihood of admission) that is produced by
scoring more than 1300 is significantly smaller for African-American and
especially for Hispanic students than the reward for white students who
score more than 1300. Thus, we find that the underrepresented minority
advantage is greatest for African-American and Hispanic applicants with
SAT scores in the 12001300 range and not for applicants with relatively
low scores (cf. Dugan et. al., 1996).”</p>
<p>Shrinkrap,</p>
<p>Interesting re Espenshade and had not focused on that part. 1200 to 1300 is a borderline score for competitive candidates at top schools and so this makes some sense. Somewhat reassuring (to me at least) that less preference is given to 600 or below due to concerns about mismatch and being able to perform the work. The number 600 is interesting too because during the days of rampant Jewish discrimination Harvard used a 600 SAT cutoff or the men of character and fine quality 9read wealthy WASPS) that it accepted ove rmroe qualified Jewish applicants. </p>
<p>I would be surprised though if top colleges (sans perhaps the very tippy top like HYPSM) were rejecting too many 1300-plus AA’s due to their sparse numbers (per scores by racal breakdown on the SAT web site). Thanks.</p>
<p>Another race case may be headed for the Supreme Court (seeking fast track review so that, if cert is granted, this case would come up prior to the Fisher decision). This one comes from the Sixth Circuit, which affirmed a lower court decision that Michigan’s ban on affirmative action (via a ballot initiative and subsequent election changing the Michigan Constitution) violates the Equal Protection Clause. This is a legal outlier and many liberals think the reasoning was a bit screwy (based on the freedom to petition being denied by this ballot initiative; of course nothing denies AA supporters the right to get another petition on the ballot and revoke this amendment, but the opinion does not address this). </p>
<p>My guess is if the Supreme Court grants this petition it is another sign that AA is on the way out. </p>
<p>[Fast-track</a> effort on new race case : SCOTUSblog](<a href=“http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/12/fast-track-effort-on-new-race-case/]Fast-track”>Fast-track effort on new race case - SCOTUSblog)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But it does not work like that. I think you’d be hard pressed to argue that there are many “URM” students from “cruddy public schools” who apply to elites. I’d wager that most of the "URM"s at elites came from “terrific suburban” high schools.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>How can we ever attain a “colorblind society” if we continue to focus on racial classification?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You made this argument in the last incarnation of this thread: [My</a> Reply](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1228264-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-9-a-49.html#post13943200]My”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1228264-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-9-a-49.html#post13943200).</p>
<p>I don’t think you replied then, but I look forward to your reply now.</p>
<p>Ha, you remember me. I’ll get to you soon.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You’re saying we’ll achieve a colorblind society by ignoring plights specific to individual racial groups. There’s no sound reasoning behind that. Society will never be colorblind as long as there is merit in America to stereotypes associating “black” with ‘poor’, ‘dumb’, and ‘criminal’.</p>
<p>Hey…fabrizio, those arguments aren’t very similar at all. :/</p>
<p>In any case, are you familiar with the statistics showing that the only two groups that really benefit from attending HYP (and the others) instead of less prestigious ones (once accepted to schools from both categories) are URMs and persons from poor socioeconomic backgrounds?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m saying that the first step to achieving a colorblind society is to STOP CONSIDERING COLOR. Does doing so lead to the end goal overnight? Of course not. But you can’t ever reach the end goal if you’re always going to insist that color matters “temporarily.”</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In your post #719 from the last incarnation of this thread, you said “Blacks still haven’t recovered from their cultural history. Their integration into society is still not yet complete, and race still constitutes a major problem in the US.” I see your words then - “cultural history” - and your words now - “slavery and what came after it” - as describing the same thing.</p>
<p>As to your last point, I believe you’re referring to a study done by Dale and Krueger. I have no reason to doubt their findings. Whether it justifies racial preferences is unclear. I am wary of relying on research to argue for the use of racial classification. I believe Orlando Patterson did a study showing that whites who room with "URM"s leave with better impressions of "URM"s while whites who room with Asians leave with no change in their impression of Asians but worse impressions of "URM"s. Does that mean we should avoid pairing whites and Asians together? I would say no.</p>
<p>If you think that example is not relevant, think of this. What if it had turned out that research found that segregated schools led to better academic outcomes? Would that have justified upholding Plessy v. Ferguson? I would say no.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Please, affirmative action did not create racism. It existed before affirmative action existed. The state does not become a murderer because it executes a murderer. The state does not become a kidnapper for locking up a kidnapper. Ignoring a crime does not mean a crime does not exist.</p>