<p>I take it, then, that you did not read the entire article by Sander and Taylor you mentioned a few pages back. They describe research suggesting that today’s college students make friends more easily not based on racial classification but ability parity.</p>
<p>Economics professor Peter Arcidiacono and his colleagues at Duke University found in a 2011 study that students were much more likely to become friends with classmates they saw as academically similar to themselves. Students with large preferences were more likely to self-segregate and find themselves socially isolated.</p>
<p>In other words, the “small central core” is likely to be most comfortable WITH EACH OTHER. They are not likely to be as close to “the rest,” who are less able than they are academically.</p>
<p>But again, you are continuing to prove my point that to you, some students are mere tools to be used so that a “small central core” of “brilliant” students can develop.</p>
<p>I may not, but I know that you don’t understand the difference between a percentage decrease and a percentage point decrease. The percentage point decrease for blacks exceeded that of whites. Percentage decreases can be meaningful, but they can also be misleading. A one percentage point decrease from 2% to 1% is a 50% decrease.</p>
<p>They could be right and Duke is certainly welcome to try it and see how it works out for them. Then, see how many Black stars they can attract. I do support a school’s right to choose, just as I support the right of Baylor to choose. However, you are not arguing that Duke should have this choice are you? You are also not arguing that preferences should be smaller are you? You are saying Duke should be forbidden from considering race as a factor. These are very different positions. So, why bring it up?</p>
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<p>You are taking it out of context. Mismatch argues that students who receive large preferences underperform in STEM classes and reluctantly have to change majors. This forces them to break their established friendships and find new friends interested in a different major. In addition, with professional dreams shattered, they become depressed, bitter, isolated and self segregate, blaming others for their failure. The argument is not that smart people cannot be friends with less smart people. So, the question becomes, what is a large preference? Mismatch draws on two studies, </p>
<p>one by NAEP regarding which it says,</p>
<p>“Perhaps the most authoritative source for documenting racial achievement gaps is the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), which has measured reading and math skills among nine-, thirteen, and seventeen- year-old students for over forty years. NAEP tests attempt to maintain comparability over time and across ages; test results for reading and math are each measured on absolute 500 point scale. In 2008 (the most recent year with good comparative data) the mean reading score for nine-year olds of all races was 220; for thirteen-year-olds, 260; and for seventeen-year-olds286. Another way of putting this is that a typical seventeen-year-old has reading ability that would place her at about the 80th precentile of thirteen-year-olds. Students thus progress over time, but not very dramatically.” - Mismatch by Richard Sander & Stuart Taylor Jr. pg 261</p>
<p>The other study is mentioned on pg. 95, where the authors draw comparisons between SAT scores and CLA (Collegiate Learning Assessment) test results, in a study by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa suggesting that mismatched </p>
<p>“Blacks were not only lagging further behind; they were barely registeryng any omprovement inskills during the first two years of college.”</p>
<p>Essentially, they are arguing that after age 13, academic progress slows among all of us (50 to 80) or about a std deviation and mismatch makes it worse.</p>
<p>Personally, I do not doubt that** large **preferences can be harmful. Although, I may disagree with the definition of what constitutes a large preference, for obvious reason that my son was able to traverse across four standard deviations after age 13 on the SAT during a period in which he was mismatched and taking STEM courses.</p>
<p>If you’re claiming that the situation for blacks improved more from 1940-1960 than for whites, the percentage decrease is what matters, not the percentage point decrease. The while population started with a significantly smaller percentage of people in poverty in the first place - and still had a significantly smaller percentage in poverty by 1960.</p>
<p>For the percentage of both populations that were not living in poverty in 1940, we don’t know if they were better off or not in 1960. For the percentage that were, we have the statistics - Of those in poverty, roughly 50% of whites were not longer in poverty, while only 30% of black had improved enough to be out of poverty. There was a larger percentage of the black population that was capable of moving out of poverty to begin with.</p>
<p>Because you refuse to acknowledge that your premises are faulty. You refuse to accept that in 2012, the likelihood of whites at elites refusing to interact with blacks is almost zero. You refuse to entertain the possibility that in 2012, students are more likely to make friends based on substance instead of skin color. That’s why I bring it up.</p>
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<p>Do you also support an establishment’s “right to refuse to serve blacks”? If not, why not? What’s the difference?</p>
<p>I took nothing out of a context; that was a direct quote, and I provided the full context. I did not say that “smart people cannot be friends with less smart people.” I said They are not likely to be as close to “the rest,” who are less able than they are academically.</p>
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<p>Again, I question whether your son really “improved” or whether it was simply because he was attending bad schools for eight years. I’m pretty sure that had he attended “borderline average” schools as I did, he too would only have improved by one standard deviation from 13 to 17 because he, like me, would’ve scored such that the most he could have improved by was…one standard deviation.</p>
<p>Thank you, mokusatsu. I believe our conversation is over. I close with an observation of how ironic it is for someone whose name is a Japanese word to have remarked that the Japanese deserved to be nuked in WWII.</p>
<p>OK, first, your computations are off. I didn’t correct you earlier because I thought you would have corrected yourself, but you did not.</p>
<p>Second, we don’t have the statistics for whites. We have the overall percentages after 1960. Now, then, let’s redo the calculations. Going from 23% to 13% is a 43.48% percentage decrease, not ~50%. Going from 47% to 30% is a 36.17% decrease, not ~30%. So the two are not so drastically different as you made them out to be.</p>
<p>Still, your point is well taken. I may not be able to conclude that blacks did better than whites in getting out of poverty from 1940 to 1970.</p>
<p>You really do not understand what the authors are saying, if all you are going to do is take one study quoted by the authors out of context. There are problems with these types of studies according to the authors themsevles. For example, according to Mismatch there is a study in which students were asked: </p>
<p>"how many close friends they had were from a different race. Nearly all (92%) of the white students reported they had “three or more” such friends, only 37% of the blacks students and 29% of the Hispanic students reported “three or more” interracial friendships. … A similarly profound finding from the study was that over 70% of the law students thought that “having students of different races and ethnicities” was a “clearly positive” thing. </p>
<p>Surverys of this type mostly tell us that students- especially white students- are eagar to display their racial cosmopolitanism and their understandinf of the official diversity line that university leaders promote at nearly all school events. Studies of student opinion that fail to control for the automatic desire of students to provide the “correct” response are almost worthless. A good deal of diversity research has these weaknesses and amounts to a sort of happy talk about interracial utopias on college campuses. </p>
<p>Thus, when white students are asked how many of their five closest friend on campus are of another race, they give impressively high numbers in response. But when, without any racial prompts, white students are asked to write down the names of their five closest friends, and the race of these friends is later determined, the number of nonwhites on the list is much lower. Or, to put the issue another way, when we compare the interracial friendships of white college students with those of the average white American, the patteerns are not notably different."</p>
<p>So, please spare me. Quote me stats on interacial marriages between Blacks and Whites so I may believe this is a colorblind society. Show me a university where Black academic stars attend without preferences.</p>
<p>Congratulations. You have just destroyed your own argument. You seem to agree with Sander and Taylor’s characterization of “diversity research.” But what is the implication of your agreement for your arguments? The evidence does not lead to a conclusion that racial preferences have done anything to really promote interaction across racial classifications: on pages 97 and 98 of the book (available sometimes on Google Books preview), the authors wrote that “when we compare the interracial friendships of white college students with those of the average white American, the patterns are not notably different.”</p>
<p>So what you advocate is not only based on an anachronistic view of the United States but also not shown by research to be effective in realizing your “socialist commune” utopia vision.</p>
<p>I am trying to understand which one of my arguments I destroyed? Did I say that creating a colorblind utopia on campus was the goal of affirmative action? Can you show me where I said that? Talk about a strawman.The goal, I have said repeatedly, is to attract Black academic stars by providing them a social environment they may enjoy. The goal is not to break down social barriers between whites and blacks by forcing blacks to socially compromize with whites.The goal is actually quite the opposite.</p>
<p>If that isn’t one of the (not necessarily “the” only) goals of racial preferences as you have articulated, then why did you see fit to decry in post #269 that “America is not a colorblind society yet”? Why did you bemoan how “the frats and even the cafeterias in colleges seem divided along racial lines”?</p>
<p>Why mention these things at all if it turns out that “the” only goal you care about is making it as easy as possible for blacks to self-segregate? And don’t even try to deny it this time like you’ve been denying it for the past ten or so pages. By your own admission, by your own words, the goal is “not to break down social barriers between whites and blacks by forcing blacks to socially compromize [sic] with whites.” It is the opposite; that is, to MAINTAIN those social barriers, or what few that persist in 2012.</p>
<p>It is incomprehensible to me that defenders of racial preferences are actually defending you on this. Taken to a logical extreme, your argument supports segregation.</p>
<p>which is why, I have been arguing, adcoms should be able to admit top kids from such schools, with lower SAT scores. Once these kids get to an elite school and receive the type of environment my son received at his high school their true potential can shine through and they can experience the same type of improvement in SAT scores etc as my son - 4 standard deviations.</p>
<p>Certainly what I found hideous was not the creation of a Black academic star. Therefore, I do not think it should be her responsibility alone to be forced to clean up the mess. I think what you are missing is the part on **“forcing blacks to socially compromize [sic] with whites.” ** We are back to the empathy thing here. </p>
<p>One goal of colleges is to make sure both white and black academic stars feel equally socially comfortable and one not unduly **pressured ** to socially compromise to the beliefs of the other. They are all working hard and a black should not have to compromise with a white because she is feeling socially isolated, if whites do not have to do the same. In other words the black star should have the option to listen to black music and go to black clubs with her friends the same as a stressed white may want to listen to white music etc with her friends at her sorority. Otherwise, Black academic stars may not decide to come to these universities and go to HBCs. So the process of integration is slow, but better than having whites attending their colleges and blacks attending HBCs.</p>
<p>AA has become irrelevant in terms of its proclaimed purpose and reality. Many blacks choose to self segregate-as is seen from such institutions as the BET, Ebony Magazine, Miss Black America, all the service sororities and fraternities for blacks, even the election of Obama-so many voted for him simply because he is black rather than on a resume of useful qualifications. IMO, AA has outlived its useful life and only serves to provide an unfair advantage to those who will still choose to be segregated and who have not taken the legs up which have been extended through so many programs. At what point does personal responsibility come in to play? How many other groups of peoples have come to this country having experienced opression and discrimination and have pulled themselves up without the advantages of AA and many government programs? Get your big boy/girl pants on and do it on your own, folks. This is the land of opportunity and history is the past. TODAY is yours to make what YOU will of it.</p>
<p>@grandscheme:
AA may have outlived its original purposes but your citation of the existence of BET, Ebony, black greek orgs as evidence is frankly, foolish.</p>
<p>I suppose your race-blind American ideal would also extinguish Univision, ESPN Desportes, my local arab-language TV? Omigosh, why should all those complaining black women not be SATISFIED with Vogue or Marie Claire – just tweak those white womens’ heath and beauty products and fashion and everyone should be hunky dorey right?? The temerity of those people! Don’t they have enough? And why should we continue 100 year old sorority and frats? Didn’t 1964 take care of the need for all that? And why does hip hop music need to be so loud? Is it time for Chinese New years again? What’s wrong with Jan 1st?</p>
<p>Personal responsibility and the examination of real issues that prolong reliance upon the state are real issues. The existence of Essence magazine or Alpha Phi Alpha are not the enemy. when you toss out straw men like that, you lose any sense of legitimacy in discussing your underlying proposals.</p>
<p>May I also suggest you volunteer as a once a month reading assistant at a majority Latino or Black inner city elementary school? Or indeed, any school with +50% free/reduced lunch. Eye opening.</p>
<p>My point is to stop wallowing in being segregated. It is as much a choice as it is a product of a misguided past. Like I wrote, put your big girl/boy pants on and make your life be what you want it to be without blaming it on the past. Opportunity exists for those who do. Deal with it.</p>
<p>But now you are talking about socioeconomic preferences, NOT racial preferences. As I have repeatedly told you, the "URM"s at elites are by and large not from “ethnic schools.” They are from “mainstream competitive high schools.”</p>