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<p>I did not say racial preferences created racism or that there was no racism before racial preferences. I said that we can never achieve a colorblind society if we continue to emphasize the “importance” of color. Obviously you disagree. I’d like to read why you disagree instead of reading you knock down a straw man.</p>
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<p>It works like this, super intelligent, v. wealthy, v. influential whites want to know intelligent wealthy influential blacks in college and meet other whites like themselves . Super intelligent Blacks, even if very few, want to meet and make friends with the children of influential, wealthy, smart blacks in college, perhaps socialize since they will not be invited to the frat and cafetria table for whites. The colleges are trying to create an environment in which these stars can enjoy working for the next four year or more. They are not some socialist commune for just the smartest kids, according to the rules that you thought up. There exist some super stars and then there exist some very intelligent, but less than academic stars with whom the stars can enjoy living with and get to know. Everyone is playing a role and benefitting. It is a team and the adcoms put it together.</p>
<p>@muck,</p>
<p>I wasn’t referring to Jews interned in German concentration camps, I was referring to U.S. citizen Japanese-Americans interned in concentration camps on U.S. soil.</p>
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<p>Look to what causes a thing to fix it rather than focusing on side issues that contain the problem or the symptoms and blaming them for causing the problem.</p>
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<p>Nothing you said disputed what I wrote. (Do you think super intelligent blacks go to “terrific suburban” high schools or “cruddy public schools”?) What I find amusing is that you, a self-described immigrant from some country in Asia, found self-segregation among students off-putting and bemoaned how our society is far from colorblind. Yet you are, with great gusto and condescension, justifying the continued use of racial preferences because apparently, it is worth preserving a system whereby colleges match “super intelligent, very wealthy, and very influential” whites with similar whites and blacks. That is to say, it isn’t about bringing different students with different ideas, interests, and talents together. No, it’s about getting elite whites and blacks together.</p>
<p>I would laugh at the irony if it didn’t have such unfortunate implications.</p>
<p>Oh, and not that you’ll acknowledge it, but you straw manned me again: I never said elites are “some socialist commune for just the smartest kids.”</p>
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<p>What causes racism is viewing people as members of groups (i.e. racial classifications) instead of as individuals. When you view a person as a unique individual, and not a member of some arbitrary meaningless racial classification, you cannot be racist.</p>
<p>What you propose is the continued categorization of people into these arbitrary racial classifications because you believe doing so will promote mutual understanding and tolerance and thereby lead to a state where we don’t have to categorize people anymore. It’s thus even more ironic that you labeled my view of colleges as a “socialist commune” since what you support is not far from that.</p>
<p>Well, if whites AND blacks have social elites it seems it’d be much easier for blacks to find motivation to succeed later on. If both sides were to have level footing based on population, minorities would have higher chances of expanding their influence and maybe eventually overcoming racism altogether (through having more social leaders), at which point we could hopefully shake off the preference system and not have reversed oppression. The big problem I have with eliminating affirmative action now is that you’d be essentially flushing out the middle class in favor of the poor (not necessarily a good idea) based on the wealth of individuals and not districts. You’d also be creating more of a hierarchy in which extremely wealthy citizens gain much more of an advantage while the poor would simply “level out” with the middle class in education, which could easily hurt the majority of Americans in the long run. Just looking at Berkley, the student body is extraordinarily disproportionate with favoritism toward whites and Asians (granted some disproportionality is sheerly from location), and that would definitely increase in magnitude over time. That’s fine at one university, but I’d hope it wouldn’t happen everywhere; instead, it’d be much better to let schools choose whether they care about race or not like in the current system than to risk a huge social blowback later on down the road. Ideally, sure it sounds better to have children of unskilled workers working alongside those of corporate CEOs, but ultimately SOMETHING has to be left out of the picture, be it race or class. We can’t really even hope to be tolerant (or have moral relativity under the illusion of tolerance), but I’d much rather have a system that promotes freedom outside of non-intellectual factors than based purely on reasonable resources (we have public education and libraries for a reason). Ultimately, if you’re sore you don’t get into an Ivy League school and have to take a full ride to a state school, you may be missing the whole point of education and instead focusing on how you missed out on a shot at perceived elite status.</p>
<p>Edit: The first sentence only said “whites and blacks” as a response to post 285.</p>
<p>Fab, when you watch the news, and hear a story about a crime, do you ever think " oh, please, don’t let it be a black guy"? I do. Is that racism? When you make an appointments to see a doctor, and the first thing you notice is that he looks like you, is that racism? I don’t think that would be true in Jamaica, or Nigeria, …or Atlanta? …I was just in Atlanta. Bizzaro world, compared to N. CAL,</p>
<p>I’m guessing you think that has nothing to do with higher education. Shrug .(I’'ve been DYING to do that shrug thing…)</p>
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<p>Racism refers to an intense hate for a group by suggesting it is less than human because of skin color, then discriminating against them to deprive them. You are lumping hate into recognizing differences. There is nothing wrong with recognizing someone is Jewish or Black or a member of some other group as long as we do not deny their humanity. </p>
<p>Affirmative Action does not suggest whites or other races are less than Blacks. Like I said, a state is not a murderer if it executes a murderer. A state is not a kidnapper if it jails a kidnapper. At some very basic level you do not seem to be able to relate to what I am saying. Perhaps, you lack empathy for how African Americans were treated and the condition they are in because of that treatment.</p>
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<p>How? How would the end goal be reached by ignoring issues that arose due to race?
Do you think that when we stop thinking about black people as black people, they’ll suddenly start achieving on the same level as whites and asians?</p>
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<p>You can’t say it wouldn’t have made “separate but equal” an easier principle to defend and had broad implications about the best way to relate african americans and whites in society. But alternate universe is complicated alternate universe.</p>
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<p>That sort of racism is no longer a real problem. It’s the differences between racial groups that need to be addressed. That simply closing our eyes to race issues at this point is a laughably terrible strategy for solving them.</p>
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<p>The classifications aren’t arbitrary. There are simply vast qualitative differences between URMs and other groups. Differences particular to these groups that transcend mere socioeconomic differences.</p>
<p>If these race issues were just socioeconomic issues that a disproportionate number of members of a particular race were stuck in, I’d be all for eliminating AA. But it isn’t, as studies of race and economic situation and academic performance show. </p>
<p>These problems can only be addressed through specific attention to the specific groups affected. This is no arbitrary distinction (though an emphasis on non-immigrant blacks would be preferable) like racism, itself, was since it is based on background rather than skin color.</p>
<p>Fabrizio,</p>
<p>Fair point re AA benefits going to international URMs and wealthy AA’s. However, lower income URMs also directly benefit from AA – especially over the last decade.</p>
<p>[Affirmative</a> Action Blog Spot: Low-Income Young Adults are the New Face of the College-Going Population](<a href=“http://affirmact.blogspot.com/2010/06/low-income-young-adults-are-new-face-of.html]Affirmative”>The AAAED | News & Commentary : Low-Income Young Adults are the New Face of the College-Going Population)</p>
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<p>I see your point. Richard Thompson Ford has an anecdote in his book, [The</a> Race Card](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/The-Race-Card-Bluffing-Relations/dp/031242826X/]The”>http://www.amazon.com/The-Race-Card-Bluffing-Relations/dp/031242826X/), that I can recall with paraphrasing. A student asked him about a professor whose name she did not know. Being helpful, Ford asked her to describe the professor. She did the following:</p>
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<li>He (gender, helps)</li>
<li>is middle agged (does not help much)</li>
<li>wears glasses (does not help much)</li>
<li>and tweed jackets (does not help much)</li>
<li>and he’s black (narrows it down to two professors, one of whom is Ford)</li>
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<p>There’s nothing wrong with DESCRIBING a person as white, black, Asian, and so forth. What’s wrong is CATEGORIZING people into groups with prespecified “characteristics” and then VIEWING them in those terms.</p>
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<p>And what would be so wrong with that? When did it ever become fashionable to defend racial preferences on the basis that it helps the middle class (or higher)? I think anyone who is genuinely on the fence regarding racial preferences would be immediately turned off if you told him that the policy should be kept as a middle-class entitlement for certain racial classifications.</p>
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<p>My sincerest apologies, but I have no idea what you’re talking about here.</p>
<p>I didn’t read your link, but have certainly heard of the race card. We never mentioned color in our home, until the kids were in high school. We would secretly call black people tall, white people short. Our kids called their friends orange, yellow pink. </p>
<p>Part of my point is, almost the only other black people me and my kids saw growing up, where on the news. When we watched the news we thought, oh no…not again… I did not realize it until we visited Georgia. </p>
<p>I think you are Asian, not sure which, but wonder if you can relate to that experience. I know you have shared some I have a harder time relating to,. Like it or not, we are not the same. I applaud your cause and your tireless zeal, but don’t agree that eliminating affirmative action will go far in decreasing racism.</p>
<p>I know you doubt me, but I dont really come here to defend " racial preferences", but usually to say how people look matters, and sometimes more than money.</p>
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<p>On several outcomes, blacks fare worse today than they did decades ago, even though as time moves on, slavery and Jim Crow become further and further in the past. So tell me,</p>
<p>Why is it that from 1890 to 1950, blacks had higher labor force participation rates than whites?</p>
<p>Why is it that in the early 20th Century, blacks had higher marriage rates than whites but today have the lowest marriage rate of any racial classification in the United States?</p>
<p>Why is it that the percentage of black children born from unmarried parents has exploded since the Moynihan report, written in 1965?</p>
<p>So don’t even try to argue that blacks are in “the condition they are in” because of slavery and Jim Crow. Blacks were doing very well for themselves from 1940 to 1970 in terms of getting out of poverty, DESPITE that racism and discrimination were institutionalized in many states in that time frame.</p>
<p>Fabrizio,</p>
<p>One more article supporting Philovitist’s point re structural problems impacting AA’s educational opportunities beyond income.</p>
<p>[Weighing</a> In: Class-Based Affirmative Action Good, But Arguments Against Race-Based Affirmative Action Still Bad](<a href=“http://hpronline.org/online/hprgument-blog/weighing-in-class-based-affirmative-action-good-but-arguments-against-race-based-affirmative-action-still-bad/]Weighing”>http://hpronline.org/online/hprgument-blog/weighing-in-class-based-affirmative-action-good-but-arguments-against-race-based-affirmative-action-still-bad/)</p>
<p>Do agree that counting internationals who come from wealthy backgrounds (28% or so of blacks at Harvard) and have not experienced structural discrimination like AA’s is unfortunate.</p>
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<p>Read what I wrote again: “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>
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<p>But that’s my point. That’s why we shouldn’t rely too much on research to justify the use of racial classification. Brown was correct for one reason and one reason only: separate but unequal is inherently unequal. That’s it.</p>
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<p>So how does granting preferences to students based on arbitrary classifications at the age of eighteen address the problem you’re talking about?</p>
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<p>Like?</p>
<p>Fabrizio,</p>
<p>None of those outcomes can be attributed to AA. </p>
<p>“Blacks were doing very well for themselves from 1940 to 1970 in terms of getting out of poverty”</p>
<p>Any stats supporting this assertion (beyond the impact of WW2)?</p>
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<p>You create these hypothetical arguments, without seeing the feasiblity or practical implication of what you are saying. One cannot expect a handful of super intelligent Blacks to integrate into a school full of whites if the white majority is not willing to integrate with Blacks. It would create social isolation for those few Blacks and put them at a great social disadvantage. You could not see that on your own, without me pointing it out to you? </p>
<p>So, by necessity affirmative action is introduced to try to provide the super qualified Blacks a social environment in which they can exist, if whites and others will not assimilate.</p>