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We’ve been over that, although what we haven’t been over is why you prefer racial AA over socioeconomic AA.</p>
<p>“why you prefer racial AA over socioeconomic AA”</p>
<p>Socioeconomic AA results in a disproportionate boost for Asians who are already racially over-represented due to their cultures’ high value placed on education. Racial AA results in higher racial diversity; racial diversity is one of the kinds of diversity private colleges want to increase.</p>
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<p>Are you sure about that? Asians have the lowest poverty rate of any ethnic group and an average household income of $57,518. The Asian ethnic groups who would be helped by socioeconomic AA are the likes of the Hmong, Lao, and Khmer, each of whom, according to UCLA’s APC, have drop out rates over 50% (possibly indicating a not-so high cultural value for education). The Asians who have high rates of educational attainment also have high incomes, so it wouldn’t unfairly boost them.</p>
<p>“Are you sure about that?”</p>
<p>Think of it this way: Among the poor, Asians (as a group, which indeed has exceptions) will be proportionately picked up first, because their academic credentials are the best of the poor. Among the non-poor, Asians are already proportionately the top race admitted.</p>
<p>Ahh, okay. I wasn’t looking at it like that.
But I feel like the same thing will happen both within and without each race. With SE AA, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Asians will get picked up because they have higher stats. Like you said, this is what already happens. In SE AA, African blacks will get picked up because they have higher stats. Again, this already happens. I don’t think that’s more unfair than racial AA. </p>
<p>I’m not sure if that was the response you were looking for.</p>
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<p>Oh no! Too many Asians!</p>
<p>Well, first, fairness is not a criterion adcoms apply at private schools. If a school needs a cellist, she is admitted ahead of an unneeded newspaper editor with higher stats, no matter how unfair that might seem. Colleges admit those they want most.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court’s decisions for state schools notwithstanding, if the racial/ethnic makeup of private colleges matched the R/E distribution of the general population without applying R/E AA, R/E AA would not be applied. Private schools that practice R/E AA don’t want to abandon it for purely SE AA because it would exchange some of the already low proportion of blacks/hispanics for more of everyone else, including the already high proportion of asians.</p>
<p>Too many whites, too! ;)</p>
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Aside from the point that most of the Asian ethnic groups with low income are Filipino/Vietnamese/Cambodian/etc (just a side point: the fact that schools simply group these students as Asian without taking into consideration extreme cultural differences is incredibly racist and a backfiring towards their own arguments), is it really bad that certain groups put emphasis on succeeding so much that the goal of our colleges is to try and stop them from succeeding? </p>
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<p>The more and more I think about AA the more I realize the possibility that it is a convoluted system meant to maintain the elite hierarchy held by White Americans that uses the superficially-ideal farce of diversity in order to achieve its goals.</p>
<p>The group that benefits socially from AA is, far and away, upper-class Caucasian America. Just reading some of the responses and beliefs here indicates how socially acceptable it has become to accuse Asians of being emotionless academic grinds while when regarding other minorities, there is an underlying sense of superiority amongst Caucasians because of the lower bar they have to reach over in order to get admitted at top schools.</p>
<p>Let me bring back a post I made earlier that I would like to use as a starting point for another discussion:</p>
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<p>Logically, socioeconomic AA will serve as an advantage to those coveted URMs more than anyone else. I will reference this once again:</p>
<p>[News:</a> Testing for ‘Mismatch’ - Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/20/mismatch]News:”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/20/mismatch)</p>
<p>The minorities applying to Duke are, generally, poorer than the Caucasians applying to Duke (interestingly enough, the Asian population applying to Duke pretty much matches the Latino population applying to Duke). If socioeconomic AA fails to serve as an adequate way of producing a healthy URM population at top schools, then there are clearly other issues at hand that account for the disparity between ethnic groups other than socioeconomic stature (in fact, the Asian/Latino comparison is pretty damning evidence indicating that there are indeed other significant factors).</p>
<p>And so, once again, I shall pose the following questions: should racial affirmative action be the solution for resolving this disparity? Or is it unjust to do so when the causes behind these differences should not so easily be forgiven? If one of those significant factors accounting for the disparity is, for example, work ethic, why should affirmative action serve to combat these differences when work ethic is universally a core element in terms of college admissions? And what happens when there is a gray area of causes, such as motivation (or lack thereof) from parents?</p>
<p>And let’s answer this as well: What makes diversity valuable at a university? Which aspects of diversity are important for a beneficial learning atmosphere, and how are those aspects of diversity often created?</p>
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Then you admit it is unfair?</p>
<p>“The group that benefits socially from AA is, far and away, upper-class Caucasian America.” </p>
<p>Care to back that up with some data, Captain Hyperbole?</p>
<p>^ No, but feel free to ignore the logic I provided to support my claim. And what sort of data would you expect on such an intangible statement?</p>
<p>“Then you admit it is unfair?”</p>
<p>It certainly is to some! There won’t be any universal agreement on what is fair.</p>
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And yet you disagree that, racially, college admissions should be fair?</p>
<p>They can’t be fair, because there isn’t any universal agreement on what is fair.</p>
<p>Is this going anywhere?</p>
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<p>[Amazon.com:</a> Admissions Confidential: An Insider’s Account of the Elite College Selection Process (9780312302351): Rachel Toor: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Admissions-Confidential-Insiders-Account-Selection/dp/0312302355]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Admissions-Confidential-Insiders-Account-Selection/dp/0312302355)</p>
<p>The basic theme is the oversupply of Caucasian upper-middle-class applicants (Too Many Whites), and Duke’s efforts to reduce their prominence on campus.</p>
<p>But it’s perfectly okay for that group to be reduced; never okay for Asians, because somehow Asians “deserve” it more, are more “entitled” and should be rewarded with no enrollment caps. Enrollment caps as a function of applicant oversupply are only appropriate for other groups (blacks, hispanics, and whites). Asians should be the only category with UNLIMITED access to the nation’s top universities.</p>
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<p>Great to see that I am not alone in thinking that. This whole thing can be easily explained by the power relationship among groups. Think divide and conquer.</p>
<p>To be fair, not all white groups benefit from this system, only the ruling elite does.</p>
<p>Why is there no longer a quota on Jews anymore, even though they are even more over-represented than Asians? Because they are part of the ruling elite now (and the Asians are not).</p>
<p>With the recent financial market meltdown, it is easy to see who the ruling elites are. They are the ones getting public bailout money, and doesn’t matter which party is in power. </p>
<p>Pretty simple really. I don’t understand why Americans are using such tortuous arguments to explain something this simple.</p>
<p>For this outsider, it looks so much like an inheritance fight that it is not funny.</p>
<p><a href=“%5Burl=http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063214969-post155.html]#155[/url]”>quote</a> They can’t be fair, because there isn’t any universal agreement on what is fair.
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<p>Science is revealing the universal. Left to their own and over long periods of times, competing interests are resolved in predictable ways which results in fairness. This conflict resolution strategy that results in universal fairness is simply the Golden Rule: </p>
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<p>By [what</a> standard](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063192385-post83.html]what”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063192385-post83.html) can we refer to any group as overrepresented or underrepresented? Inasmuch as the Supreme Court of the United States has already rejected a representation rationale for affirmative action in college admission, why are we even characterizing some groups as underrepresented and others as overrepresented? </p>
<p>I’m genuinely asking for specific numbers here: how do we make the case that any particular group is overrepresented, when groups differ by </p>
<p>a) rates of preparation for rigorous college study (there are some reasonably good studies of this issue) </p>
<p>and </p>
<p>b) rates of application to selective colleges (these figures are more hidden, but are sometimes available for some colleges)? </p>
<p>And what is the catchment area? The whole world, the whole United States, one region of the United States (differing for each college), or what?</p>
<p>I am a black man from Africa and currently attending Columbia. I am interested in racial perceptions and I read this thread out of such interest. I was very offended to read the recent posts disparaging white people. One recent poster went so far as to conclude that the policies commonly refered to as affirmative action are nothing more than a plot of white Americans to “divide and conquer” people of color. Another poster spoke of her daughters’ unwillingness to attend a university that was 90% white. These are truly some of the most absurd statements I have ever read. Open your eyes, people. You may find comfort in the fact that society allows us to blame white people for all of our ills, no matter how illogical our thinking, but in the end where will this fantasy take us? </p>
<p>Some people will hate based on skin color. That’s a truism that applies to everyone, including people of color. Indeed, the only open racism I’ve witnessed in NYC over the last few years has been by people of color. Nevertheless, there is no advancement in the excuse “the white man is to blame for all of my problems.” Not only is this untrue, it’s self-defeating. The truth is that we are to blame for our problems, whether we are black, brown, or yellow. No one can keep us down without our permission and assistance. </p>
<p>No one on this board would stand by and allow disparaging statements to be made against blacks, hispanics or Asians, and I respectfully suggest this policy should be extended to whites as well.</p>