"Race" in College Admissions FAQ & Discussion 5

<p>I don’t really see how a holistic admissions process in the US could exclude race. We like in a ultra racist country where racism comes in really nuanced/subtle ways (and typically not the blatant obvious ways as much anymore). I’d guess a lot of high school minorities don’t even understand the ways racism affects them (there should be a “race in the US” class that all hs students take).</p>

<p>I haven’t followed this whole conversation, but my general feeling is that AA is probably the one place white people lose out in this country, and as such should just take the hit and get over it. Everyone else has to deal with racism in all kind of random ways and if AA is the worst thing white people have to deal with, they are doing pretty well. Also, I bet whenever rich white kids parents send them to Andover or to a princeton review SAT prep class they think of that as totally “fair”.</p>

<p>I think poorer white people definitely have a reason to complain and some changes should be made for them, but thats about it. Maybe give rich minorities less of a bump as well.</p>

<p>nychopeful, we’re you beaten up by a white person when you were younger? If your message was a joke, I apologize. I took it seriously. Your attempt to argue that racism exists by making racist statements is an interesting approach. Your message was the closest thing I’ve seen to “ultra” racism in a long time. If you were to take your message and replace the word “white” with any other skin color, you’d be qualified to be a Nazi. </p>

<p>By the way, my SAT prep class ($8,000) had one white student, nine Asians, one black student, and four Middle Easterners. My friend attended the same class in a different city and her class had no white students. It has been my experience that Asians and Middle Eastern students take these classes at a much, much higher rate than do white students. </p>

<p>As I’ve stated before on this board, I’ve been called racist names four times in my life (I’m Asian), but never by a white person. Am I one of those “high school minorities [who] don’t even understand the ways racism affects them”? Poor stupid me. I guess I’m lucky that there are people like you who see the shadow of racism on every wall.</p>

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Like racial affirmative action.

Wrong. Asians, not Caucasians, are the ones adversely affected by affirmative action. And regardless of if it were true or not that whites were affected, do you believe reverse discrimination will somehow right the wrongs created by typical racism?

There is a general consensus on this thread amongst racial AA dissenters that this is definitely not fair and that this is part of the reason why socioeconomic AA should come into play.</p>

<p>"you knowingly “[put] the wrong words into [my] mouth.”</p>

<p>Yes, that’s the difference, I knowingly did so, as an illustration; I hope that was clear.</p>

<p>“Why is it that highly intelligent and well-educated persons such as yourself cannot grasp such a simple concept as opposing racial preferences does not mean opposing holistic admissions? Why?”</p>

<p>Your premise is wrong, so your question can’t be answered, but you might ask why opponents of racial preferences belittle holistic admissions:</p>

<p>“The one way in which these colleges are able to conduct racial affirmative action is by having a holistic process; that way, they can deny any such claims of racial biases in terms of college admissions when they know that they are lying through their teeth.”</p>

<p>“Holistic” = from a Greek word meaning “whole.” (Don’t have a Greek keyboard.)</p>

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<p>Proving my earlier point that there are those who will file lawsuits and go on for 100+ pages on a discussion board in an attempt to recreate college admissions in their own image. Holistic is holistic. As in whole, as in, eliminating nothing, as in, considering everything, not just the preferences of particular individuals or groups. And students from the heavily over-represented East Coast also want not to include region in the admissions process, but region is included as well, despite its “unfairness” to those living on the East Coast. </p>

<p>holistic, adj.

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<p>I lived almost my entire life in the British Commonwealth, and in predominately white communities. I find native-born white Canadians, and by extension, Americans to be the best neighbors and local politicians. I have no wish to live anywhere else.</p>

<p>Your other two points are well-taken. I do not trust our leadership and spend a lot of time thinking and acting to neutralize their policies and their negative impacts on my life. Trusting them? You got to be kidding. I have said it here many times: you don’t get to the top by being nice. I agree with you though that the so-called leaders in most nations make ours look like chorus boys, and ours are anything but chorus boys.</p>

<p>You must also understand that I am a disinterested observer here while you are a beneficiary of this policy. Ironically, your ancestors could even be responsible for selling others into slavery yet now you are sharing the benefits of AA with their descendants. Divide and conquer at its cynical best.</p>

<p>My last post simply points out some of the arguments used here are not based on reality. They are not based on data and they lack internal consistency, signs that the arguments are not arguments at all.</p>

<p>The very fact that we are spending this much time on this topic arguing shows divide and conquer works, don’t you think?</p>

<p>All the while, the greatest wealth transfer in history is going on right under our noses…</p>

<p>Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.</p>

<p>Why object only to race in holistic admissions? What about (as epiph raised), geography? and parental income, education and occupation? and name of high school? and gender? and disability and life “challenges”, if any? All applicants are considered in those groupings. Why are they not just as offensive as being evaluated in a racial group?</p>

<p>Re #204</p>

<p>No, the difference is that I can back up my statement and have already done so. You are unable to support yours.</p>

<p>My premise is not flawed. You are highly intelligent and well-educated, and you do make the all-too-common fallacy of “people who oppose racial preferences must also oppose holistic admissions.”</p>

<p>I don’t interpret your quote as belittling holistic admissions. Rather, I see it as an attack on those who always invoke the “holistic admissions”-card in affirmative action discussions.</p>

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<p>You may have proved your earlier point, but you have certainly proved my point that persons such as yourself view race as a sufficient condition for holistic admissions. Logically, you believe the following statement and its contrapositive:</p>

<p>If admissions is holistic, then race is considered.
If race is not considered, then admissions is not holistic.</p>

<p>I disagree that race must play such a paramount role in determining what is holistic, and I point out once more that you are de facto admitting that race is an extremely important “contributing factor,” for you believe that without it, a process cannot be holistic.</p>

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<p>The greatest flaw in this argument is trivializing the historical impact of race in our nation. There is a reason why racial classifications in Supreme Court jurisprudence are subject to “strict scrutiny” whereas geography is not, and that reason answers your rhetorical questions.</p>

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<p>No it does not. Including other categorical “groupings” as discriminatory does not in any way trivialize the importance of racial equality. The same analysis would be used for banning all of them - they favor some groups over others. Why is that okay with you?</p>

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<p>Indeed. Not to include race is to trivialize it as a marginal, invalid, or nonessential aspect of a freshman class fully representing the nation. It is unAmerican to exclude any particular race from a college population. The goal is balance, not exclusion. As it is, the elite U’s teeter precariously from a position of severe unbalance in racial/ethnic representation, favoring one group disproportionally relative to all the others.</p>

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<p>No, the same analysis would NOT be used for banning “all [categorical groupings].”</p>

<p>Are you seriously trying to say that requiring applicants to take standardized tests, write essays, and solicit recommendations creates suspect classifications? Please.</p>

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<p>No, not including race does not trivialize anything. Racial classifications have done so much harm in the past, why continue the practice?!</p>

<p>It would be highly un-American to “exclude any particular race from a college population.” But, hey, didn’t you say that it would be in my imagination if I thought that changing race policies would have any significant effect on campus diversity? Which is it, epiphany? Does ending racial preferences result in a “tiny” negative impact on diversity, or does it result in “severe unbalance”?</p>

<p>A friend’s daughter thinks its fine to list herself as African American because her mom was born in Egypt to middle eastern parents.</p>

<p>Curious, is there any formal definition for college application purposes (not interrested in debating the morality of doing so) ? </p>

<p>It sounds like a risky and peculiar strategy to me but maybe this happens all the time and I am naive!</p>

<p>Yes it’s risky. Here’s the official census definition of African American: “Black or African American. A person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as “Black, African Am., or Negro,” or provide written entries such as African American, Afro American, Kenyan, Nigerian, or Haitian.”</p>

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If affirmative action is meant to reconcile adversity, then let it reconcile all forms of adversity. It matters not how an applicant became disadvantaged but rather that the applicant is disadvantaged. Otherwise affirmative action becomes little more than political leverage and in the process does indeed become discriminatory.</p>

<p>We all know that one of the main reasons why African-Americans struggle to get into top universities without affirmative action is the historical background. Fine; let them receive advantages because of what that historical background has done (in other words, if they are in a low socioeconomic position because of that historical background, grant them an admissions boost). Don’t grant an admissions boost because of the past, but rather because of the present. Should a poor Hispanic (or anyone of a non-black ethnicity) not receive an admissions boost because her parents were not segregated against during the Civil Rights tumults of the 50s and 60s?</p>

<p>Another argument I fail to understand is that historical background causes more trouble for African-Americans than simply economic stature. I understand that there are still underlying tensions because of the only relatively recent acceptance in the 1960s of African-Americans (and other minorities) as our unequivocal equals. And because of these tensions, I can somewhat grasp the idea that under-performance on tests could be tied to a disdain among the African-American community for being associated with Caucasians. But when it comes to top applicants, this should be a barrier that they have already broken many times. After all, if they truly care for receiving the highest quality educations available, surely they have already considered that they would be exposed to and connected with many wealthy Caucasians and have deemed that point irrelevant to their decision to strive for the best. Thus, they are unaffected by the barrier and do not need the advantage of affirmative action.</p>

<p>Of course, many African-Americans have yet to break this barrier. And they righteously may feel embittered by the hundreds of years of oppression that their ancestors may have faced. But to extend this grudge to a point where they essentially refuse to be associated with Caucasians and their perceived snootiness, well, it has become ridiculous and only self-harmful, a harm that affirmative action may try to diminish but will never by itself resolve or even reduce. There’s no easy way to put it, but this is an attitude that will have to wither over time or else it will remain obstinate in place. It is something the African-American community surmount; otherwise no progress will be made.</p>

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<p>Why not? Just because race is considered a “suspect class” does not render invalid a claim that colleges discriminate on the basis of many factors.</p>

<p>Why do some private colleges consistently maintain international representation at about 10% ? Sounds like discrimination based on citizenship/country of origin to me.</p>

<p>How about colleges with equal numbers of males and females? There must be gender discrimination at play, because everyone knows that more females than males apply to college.</p>

<p>What about fairly static numbers of full-pay students? And Pell-grant recipients? Certainly they must be discriminating based on socioeconomic status.</p>

<p>And what is this with “first-generation” preferences? Certainly this would create discriminatory “negative” action with regard to all the qualified applicants who had no control over their parents’ education.</p>

<p>Or are all of these preferences acceptable to you, and race is the only one with which you have a problem? </p>

<p>Am I understanding you correctly, that standardized tests, essay and recommendations are the only criteria you deem acceptable for consideration? You can’t be serious.</p>

<p>Essays are so easily plaigarized. You are going to admit students based on those?</p>

<p>And recommendations? Wow, its only a matter of time before that practice gets tossed due on allegations of libel and slander. And what if your counselor describes you as a “textureless math grind?” You are not even really allowed to know what your counselor writes. You think colleges ought to be able to reject you based on that?</p>

<p>You don’t even mention GPAs. But why should those be a determining factor? One teacher’s A is another teacher’s C. Using GPA discriminates against students who had more challenging teachers. Is that fair?</p>

<p>So we are left with standardized test scores. That is really the only thing you think matters, don’t you? And certainly every child in America, regardless of circumstances, is given an equal opportunity to score an 800 on them, right? If one gets a 700 and the other gets a 800, it just means that the first one didn’t study hard enough, right? Never mind that there is no evidence that SAT scores predict performance in college after Freshman year, and that the majority of college courses do not even test with multiple-choice questions.</p>

<p>I’m trying to understand your position, fab, but I am not impressed.</p>

<p>If the applicant wants to get “points” for diversity, she should check the “other” box and add “Egyptian.” </p>

<p>To permint an Egyptian applicant to claim AA heritage would be the same as permitting a student with one Afrikaner parent to claim AA heritage - - the the Boers, though originally of Dutch extraction, have been in South Africa for generations.</p>

<p>Can’t we just agree to disagree? Some want AA as part of the admission process, some don’t. Neither side accepts other’s reasoning. It’s perhaps interesting, educational and fun to exchange ideas for a while, but then it begins to seem pointless. But we’re still here, of course. :)</p>