<p>I have no idea what you’re trying to say here.</p>
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<p>Stop. Just stop. You can dress it up however you like with whatever euphemisms you like: “social environment” / “socially comfortable” / and so forth. All you’re saying is, “elites should be allowed to use racial preferences to make it easier for the racial classifications to self-segregate.” That’s all you’re saying.</p>
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<p>What integration? By your own admission, by your own words, racial preferences are not intended to facilitate “integration.” They are intended to facilitate the creation of comfortable “social environments” (i.e. self-segregation). Stop the double talk.</p>
<p>And please, let’s not go back to the whole “white school” thing. There is no such thing as a “white school” in 2012.</p>
<p>This is not 1954. This is 2012, and it’s almost 2013. No, racism isn’t extinct in the United States. But this notion that whites are unwilling or uninterested in associating or interacting with blacks at the K-12 or university level is absurd.</p>
<p>It baffles me that this is somehow accepted as true by several of the posters here.</p>
<p>How exactly were you planning on determining socioeconomic differences? I do not know the socioeconomic difference between the schools. Certainly, they were both in poor neighborhoods (more than 50% economically disadvantaged). Considering the fact that some studies suggest that almost 60% of those who are eligible for subsidized lunches do not apply for them out of embarssment, it is quite possible nearly all of them were economically disadvantaged in both neighborhoods. The main difference I can see is that yours was 40% White (almost half), while his was about 10% White (almost all URM).</p>
<p>I don’t understand your question. Are you asking how a socioeconomic preference program would be implemented?</p>
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<p>You find these things “hideous,” yet you support making it as easy as possible for blacks to self-segregate. By your own admission, by your own words, you said the goal was “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>So you support the perpetuation of what you supposedly found “hideous.”</p>
<p>Right, it is an alternative to Blacks attending HBCs and Whites attending schools with almost no Black academic stars. Atleast now they are in the same space, as they will be in normal life. The idea is, if you allow them to self segregate on the same campus, they can live in close proximity, without any rules requiring or forcing them to self segregate. Then, they cross those lines of segregation if they are comfortable, interested in exploring each other’s culture, not because they are socially isolated and have no choice, but to compromise.</p>
<p>Thanks for finally admitting that what you support is a mechanism to enable self-segregation. It only took us about ten pages or so, but thanks.</p>
<p>I didn’t read through all pages of the thread, so I’m sorry if I’m reiterating some information!</p>
<p>Would marking your ethnicity, especially if you’re considered a minority, on the common application make a difference in collegiate admissions? More specifically, would it tend to hurt your chances or help your chances? Would it even be considered?</p>
<p>For example, Iet’s say I apply to what’s considered a “big” school that’s academically competitive to get into. If I mark my ethnicity as African American, would marking that section on the common application help my chances of getting in?</p>
<p>Sorry for rambling, but I’ve been wondering about this for a while.</p>
<p>Oh, yea. Native Americans, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans get the most well-known boosts.</p>
<p>Asians and Whites do not. It’s plausible that checking yourself as Asian may actually hurt your chances due to the existence of what functionally consists of soft quotas and the competitive pool of asian applicants.</p>
<p>Yes, if that is what you think people are doing when they congregate in ethnic, linguistic, religious groups etc. There is a Black culture in this country, I see nothing wrong with universities accomodating those who belong to it, as a way to attract Black academic stars. As long as individuals are not required to segregate by law. I do not think social isolation is a good thing. If you were one of two Asians in your school, you probably know a little bit about that. Although, you could always come home after school and tap into your family for emotional support. I think colleges want to bring students who will be able to return and re-integrate and become leaders in their communities. I do not think the goal is to make them lose connection with their group and become dysfunctional in their communities.</p>
But all the other ethnic groups have their own programs to preserve their culture as well. Shall we force all of them to close? My town has the Polish American Club, the Hungarian -American Club, the Italian-American Club. There are various fraternal organizations associated with different ethnic backgrounds. </p>
<p>You also ignore the fact that the members of those ethnic groups largely CHOSE to come here. They were oppressed in their home countries, and in most cases not here. Latinos have faced some of the same discrimination in this country, but those other groups currently do not. Of those groups that did when they first arrived in large numbers, their response was the segregate themselves. So what worked for them, isn’t reasonable for Blacks?</p>
<p>What some here call self-segregation on the college campus isn’t really self-segregation. It’s OK for Catholics to gather together on campus for their religious services, and nobody would have a second thought if they chose to eat together in the dining hall, because they don’t openly “wear” that identity. Why is it not OK for the black students to sometimes gather together? They may or may not enjoy the same cultural background, but there are many things they do share in common, that they DON"T share with other students.</p>
<p>Actually, I don’t. The vast majority of people did not care about my racial classification. The few who did didn’t matter. You assume, wrongly (big surprise there), that I could only have felt comfortable with other Asians, or that whites and blacks refused to interact with me. That may have been your experience, but it wasn’t mine.</p>
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<p>Return to where? What kind of communities are we talking about here, from a socioeconomic standpoint?</p>
<p>What is “fostering cultural unity”? And as to your “majority” statement, there’s no such thing as a unified “white culture” in the United States. About 20 or so pages back, someone asked if he could self-identify as “white” even though he is Asian because he felt closer to “white culture.” I asked him what he meant by that, and I hope I left him thinking hard about what that phrase means and whether he meant “American culture.”</p>
<p>My point with respect to perazziman is that he is inconsistent and hypocritical. Ten pages back, he criticized self-segregation, claiming that it shocked him when he was an international student. But it was clear through his posts that he supported racial preferences as a means of enabling self-segregation, though it took him ten pages to finally admit to that. (Before, he insisted on using euphemisms for self-segregation like “social environment.”)</p>
<p>I’ve been discussing this issue since I was in high school, and really, that’s the first time I’ve seen anyone vigorously defend racial preferences not as a way to promote “diversity” but to promote self-segregation. It came as an even bigger surprise to me that people were actually defending him on that.</p>
<p>I never said it was not fine for blacks to gather together. It is definitely a double standard when whites gather together but then call blacks “self-segregating” for doing the same.</p>
<p>My criticism of perazziman’s argument is that while he considers self-segregation evidence that we are not yet a colorblind society, he supports the use of racial preferences to enable self-segregation. That’s hypocritical to me. If it was such a shocker to him, why would he want to make it easier to happen?</p>
Perhaps it is accepted as true because it IS true. But you wouldn’t know, because it is not part of your limited experience. It is part of ours - and is part of my daughter’s too. It is in fact part of the reason we moved out of a community with an excellent school system, because she was one of 2 black children in a class of 150 students. She was welcomed by some classmates, but the general atmosphere was not welcoming. </p>
<p>What perazziman wants to foster is not in fact self-segregation, at least by our definition (though maybe by yours). He wants more URMs on campus to support the star URM, so give that student a cultural group with which to spend time. This keeps the star from being isolated from his own culture, it does not promote self-segregation. If blacks on campus self-segregate, it is because they are not made to feel comfortable among the various other groups that have formed on campus. The star will spend plenty of time outside that social group, and may even grow apart from that group over time, but he shouldn’t feel isolated when he first steps on campus. Even if these “lesser” students don’t have very much in common with the star, they have more in common with him than random people from the community surrounding the college - and that star is likely to feel more isolated if he must go to that community to find anyone with similar cultural identity.</p>
<p>Read what you quoted - the star or any other student has the option to self-segregate BY CHOICE until he feels comfortable associating with those outside his culture - he is not dropped into the middle of what to him is a foreign culture with little to no support.</p>
<p>There is also an advantage to blacks a a whole when these students are admitted tot he elite colleges. Not all, but some will return to their communities and help others improve the situation in those communities. While you argue that many of those who benefit from affirmative action are not coming from low SES communities, so would not return there, you must consider that many did in fact grow up in those low SES communities, and their parents made strides to move out of them to improve their access to education.</p>
<p>You think perazziman’s son doesn’t deserve a boost, because he followed the “white flight” from a community with lousy schools. But the very fact that he made the necessary sacrifices to do so is an indication that he may be in a better position to return to that community and do some good. If you’re going to help someone up the ladder of success, do you help the one floundering at the bottom, or the one whose family has managed to get them up the first couple of rungs?</p>