"Race" in College Applications FAQ & Discussion 12

Applying to College
3441

@legomania Your wish for a blind system has not occurred in the history of most top schools. White Males have had a distinct advantage for the vast majority of Harvard’s existence as one example. It has never been only about Merit (unless you count legacy and the wealthy as “Merit”).

@goodjob You are right that some things in life are not fair. But I hope you realized that a long time ago. Stop worrying about things you can not control and show why you are deserving of a spot (whether you get chosen or not). Being full pay, I am sure you will have lots of advantageous outcomes (even though that might not be fair) in your college admissions journey.

3442

@roethlisburger in my city the public schools are very highly segregated. And, yes, you do have white schools and black schools. When my kids were little there was a school that used busing laws to bus in white kids because “white kids perform at higher levels than Black kids”. A lot of my neighbors sent their kids there. Policymakers and educators speak openly about building schools that are planned with the intention of excluding Black students. Schools in large cities are resegregating. NYC has extremely segregated schools that hearken back to the pre Brown era.

3443

Re: #3439

Some areas’ schools are resegregating, often due to policy changes. For example:

https://www.propublica.org/article/segregation-now-full-text

3444

@roethlisburger Your statement is completely untrue. My public elementary school in the 1980’s was 100% black, besides 1 year when we had 1 multi-racial kid. My public middle school was 95% black in 1991. Desegregation never took hold in my hometown as White flight ended any chances of that occurring. My school district today is at least 80% African American. As soon as there was some talk about resources possibly being adjusted, the 2 majority white high schools formed there own school district (along with their suburbs forming a new township). In my wife’s hometown, desegregation occurred and her parents went to integrated schools (late 60’s), but the schools were all segregated again by the time my wife made it to high school (same school district) in the early 90’s.

3445

@roethlisburger - I live on Long Island, one of the nation’s most segregated areas, with all neighborhood schools. So, for example, Garden City is almost all-white and has many opportunities for students, and is right next door to Hempstead which is largely black and considered for a state takeover of the district for poor performance.

One really well-regarded school district, for example, is 84% white, 5% Asian, 0.4% black, and 8% Hispanic (and only 4% economically disadvantaged).

The few children of minority backgrounds who attend the mostly white schools on L.I. are fully integrated into those schools, and tend to do very well, going on to good colleges, etc. But many more students attend mostly minority districts and have a different school experience.

A local organization that does anti-racism training, whom we have brought in to work with our teachers in our district, taught us the history of segregation and racist laws that kept neighborhoods segregated in the early days, right from the founding of Levittown, the nation’s archetypical suburb. The legacy of those laws and policies and practices years ago is segregation that remains to this day. It was crazy stuff!

Alas, even today, when the organization sends out young couples as “testers,” certain realtors take different families to see different neighborhoods!

So segregation by fact, though not by law, has persisted long after Brown vs. BOE.

3446

@legomania and @goodjob rich white kids have no problem at all getting into great schools…sure, it’s hard to get into a top 15 school for them, but it is hard for EVERYONE.

I advise students applying to college and year after year I have kids that don’t apply for aid that have lots and lots of schools very willing to accept them and accept their money. I also have some kids that are denied admission because they apply for aid…or are admitted with not nearly enough money to make it affordable for them.

So there are lots of ways to dissect the “fairness” question…and as this thread has proven over and over again, we will never be able to make everyone happy, especially as it relates to the “spots” at the top 15 schools because there just aren’t enough spots to go around. And I think we have also determined on this thread that while the stats of some URM’s at the top schools are lower than some unhooked white kids stats, they typically are still pretty strong applicants.

3447

@ChangeTheGame I appreciate your experiences and learn a lot from reading your posts, and I definitely don’t have the same background. However, I did grow up in a community with a diverse school system. My high school was 40% black (I am white). It was black enough that no one felt like the minority. We were all friends. We studied together, partied together, dated each other, had dinner at each others houses, etc. The difference with my community I guess was that we were a middle class community…the blacks and the whites were all more or less on the same socioeconomic level (some rich white families, but not many and not mine). So I don’t have the perspective that you did…I didn’t/haven’t seen black or white people trying to milk the system. But I would believe you that it happens…but I think it happens in white communities as well.

This is probably not a topic for this thread, but I know a lot of white people that agree with you that there are blacks that milk the system…but they may not want to face the fact that there are whites that do it too! Not sure that is just a black person problem…it’s a poor person problem.

I thought part of the issue for African American men was the disappearance of manufacturing jobs. That black men used to be able to support families in good paying jobs that didn’t require a college degree…but many of those jobs are now gone. I thought that was part of the problem as well and has hurt African American family life.

I think with or without Affirmative Action, improving the opportunities for access to a good education for all Americans needs to be part of the solution. I’m all for tweaking Affirmative Action for making it more “fair”…but defining what is more “fair” is the tricky part. And as someone pointed out, not that long ago, white men clearly had the unfair advantage that surely wasn’t merit based. Was it ever???

3448

Yeah, I think several folks have already covered how there certainly are ‘white schools’ and ‘black schools’ and ‘Mexican schools’ in the public school system. Even after Brown v. Board and the resulting laws that forced schools to desegregate, there were other laws, systems, and policies in place that made integration difficult. Redlining black families, for example - it was still legal to discriminate in mortgage lending for many years, and even after it became illegal it still happened, to the point that black and brown folks were less likely to get approved for mortgages in whiter, more affluent neighborhoods and were steered by real estate agents and lenders to blacker, poorer neighborhoods. Public transit systems were blocked from going to the whiter and more affluent neighborhoods, so poorer folks without consistent access to cars were unable to move there because they couldn’t get to work or school.

And then there’s just sheer choice: Many studies have found that many white families are unwilling to move into neighborhoods that are more than around 17% non-white, and that once a neighborhood that they already live in hits about 17% non-white, they’re more likely to move somewhere else.

I went to a (public) high school that was 98% black, and I graduated in May 2004, almost exactly 50 years after Brown v. Board was decided. Ironically, two years earlier my county ended it’s Majority-to-Minority desegregation bussing program, claiming that the goal of desegregation had been achieved. The American South has apparently lost all of the progress in school desegregation it’s made since 1967 (https://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/brown-at-60-great-progress-a-long-retreat-and-an-uncertain-future/), and there are lots of good articles to read up on about this (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/05/segregation-now/359813/; https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/resegregation-america-ncna801446)

3449

I’m not proud of it, but my parents moved out of Austin in the early 70s when busing started. They didn’t want my sister and me to be bused across town. I’m sure a lot of other parents made the same decision. We moved to a district (where Drew Brees later attended) that was 99.9% white. I remember that there was ONE black person in our entire high school. She was the sweetest, most positive person! I remember thinking how difficult it must have been for her, but she seemed to thrive. She was well-liked.

3450

@collegemomjam originally nonwhites were excluded from participating in public welfare programs. That came later with public pressure from the civil rights movement. Those programs were created for white communities and to increase white wealth.

3451

Regarding “white flight”, it occurs even when the neighborhood (or city/town or metro area) with increasing non-white population is not poor or becoming poorer.

https://news.iu.edu/stories/2018/04/iub/releases/10-research-ties-white-flight-to-race.html
https://psmag.com/social-justice/white-flight-remains-a-reality
https://www.vox.com/2017/1/18/14296126/white-segregated-suburb-neighborhood-cartoon
https://psmag.com/news/ghosts-of-white-people-past-witnessing-white-flight-from-an-asian-ethnoburb
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113236377590902105

3452

@collegemomjam My children are growing up in a similar community now. The diversity and way that children interact is beautiful to see (they revel in each other’s cultures). My entire thought process is around finding a better way than the current system. The neighborhood you grew up in and the one my kids have grown up in are so unique and gives you an perspective of what we can be.

The loss of manufacturing jobs hurt a lot of communities and is one of many things that have negatively affected black communities, but the slow death of the black family pre-dates the loss of manufacturing jobs. @juliet mentioned redlining which has been an underreported negative along with other systemic inequalities. Those inequalities have always been there. But the loss of our family dynamic has caused a generation of young black men to be raised without their fathers and those same mistakes are being repeated while making it much harder to close achievement gaps (Parental support and SES of a family will play a large role in getting rid of achievement gaps)

@juliet and @ucbalumnus My kids neighborhood school was over 70% white (now about 40% white) when we moved 13+ years ago into some of the cheapest housing available in an upper-middle class suburb so we have seen a shifting of the population demographics over the years.

3453

@ChangeTheGame

“The neighborhood you grew up in and the one my kids have grown up in are so unique and gives you an perspective of what we can be.”

That pretty much sums it up.I couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately, the reality is, these unique and ideal communities where blacks and whites learn side by side are way too few and far between.

I found out after the fact that my childhood community (in Westchester County, a very wealthy suburb of NYC…but we were just regular middle class) was actually an “experiment”…My sister and I hit it at exactly the right time. They took two towns and merged their school districts. At the beginning there was more racial tension, but by the time we got well into our school years (middle school?) everyone was friends. And high school, well, I wish I could post a picture from my 30 year high school reunion. We were the same diverse, integrated and happy bunch…and we all turned out OK! Better than OK. Two of the women in the top ten with me were black…both are doctors today (one went to MIT, the other went to Brown…and yes, Affirmative Action probably helped them get in, but they were brilliant and are both amazing women, as they were in high school. I don’t know exactly how they live their lives today, but I imagine they give back to their communities and are role models.)

My mom still lives in that community. Sadly, a lot of white families have moved away. The families I knew when growing up had no complaints…I just think the demographics of the school “scared” some new white people from moving there. I think the joke’s on them, honestly.

I felt so much more worldly than my peers in my lily-white college, many of whom had never even been around Jewish people, let alone black people. They were great people, don’t get me wrong. They just grew up in a bubble.

As it relates to this thread, I feel like allowing our top universities to not be “bubbles” is a good thing. But there are definitely a lot of bubbles in this world that need to be popped and Affirmative Action alone will certainly not be enough, on that we can all agree.

3454

@collegemomjam Thank you for explaining your perspective to me. I understand where you are coming from in your belief of diversity being necessary on elite college campuses. Your school district as a kid was living proof of the positive effects that racial diversity can bring. You see the positives of AA outweighing the negatives. I have always believed that no elite university would knowingly admit a student who can not do the work of the institution, but the question for me has always been how far do you go? I am also one who believes that transparency is needed when looking at the factors that bring about admission, because it gives a legitimacy that seems to be missing from my own point of view. I have never had issues with holistic admissions for all, but just the secrecy of the process, the shaming that occurs with URM students, and the fact that their are folks that do not see or care about the value that those students bring to elite college campuses (they only care about their “spot”). I also want to obliterate any achievement gaps among URMs so that racial preferences in college admissions becomes a moot point.

3455

Great conversation. I think part of the issue starts with 19th century immigration, when people lived in enclaves based on what nationality they were. For example, someone lauded in NY and they were Italian so they lived in Littly Italy. Or they were Jewish so they went to another place. This continued into the 20 th Century with various neighborhood in urban centers based on ethnicity or race. People often don’t want to leave family and friends. Gentrification can change things ( positively and negatively).
IF all schools in the US were good and similar there would be zero issue. People would live where they want and move when they wanted to. But all schools are not good, so some kids truly do get left behind particularly (in urban centers and low value areas). Others, chose to move into places where schools are great but the real estate is expensive perpetuating wealthy enclaves. Some are really wealthy. Some are really poor.
Kids that end up in a place without a great educational system are at a disadvantage. The college AA programs are a tiny drop in the bucket for a tiny number of kids. Most of the kids will not attend a prestigious University as a diversity candidate. What makes me really sad, is thinking about kids who would have gone further had they had better access to educational opportunities.

3456

@ChangeTheGame

“I also want to obliterate any achievement gaps among URMs so that racial preferences in college admissions becomes a moot point.”

What a great goal to have. I share that goal with you…and not only among URMs but for all American children, including the ORM’s that are born into poverty. All American children should have access to a strong education, not just those born into the right zip code.

As it relates to some white people being scared to stay in communities that are becoming too diverse, I have an interesting story.

I already explained that my community growing up was very diverse and middle class. About 40% black. The community I live in now is about 11% black and has been that way for the 20 years that I have lived here. Not very diverse in my opinion, but ca lot more diverse than some of the neighboring towns (some almost all white, some almost all black…welcome to NJ!).

Anyway, when my first daughter was born I was in a playgroup with some other moms from the area. One of them grew up in the town we live in now. Since the day I met her she and her husband were trying to raise the money to get out. Their main motivation was schools which she often described with disgust as being at least half black, if not more. This was obviously an issue for her. She claimed that it was the same way when she went through the schools and she didn’t want that for her children.

So this made my blood boil and I was determined to prove her wrong.

So I went to the library and I found her high school yearbook, as well as a more current yearbook. I counted the pictures of the graduating seniors in both yearbooks. Sure enough, I was right and both classes were about 13% black (so slightly higher than the numbers published…probably because some kids end up going to private high schools). So I guess having a little more than 1 out of 10 students being black somehow equated to “half” black to her…regardless, she thought there were way too many blacks for her to subject her kids to.

I couldn’t wait until our next play group to tell her what I found. I had no shame.

Needless to say, we have lost touch. She and her husband ended up moving to a really expensive town but living in a neighborhood referred to as the “guinea gulch” or something like that…a neighborhood with a derogatory connotation…an insult to Italians, obviously, which she and I both are. I often wonder if she thinks the move was worth it.

I’m not saying anything would have turned out differently had she not moved, but I find it a little ironic that my kids ended up at far superior colleges to her kids (I have run into her over the years because she ended up bringing her kids back to our area for gymnastics and other activities, that alone is ironic if you ask me). My oldest was 7th in her class, scholar athlete, and ended up at a great school from which she is about to graduate and has a great job waiting for her. My second daughter was Valedictorian, went to an even better school and as a sophomore, already has an internship at a great firm that will likely lead to a great job as well. My son is following in their footsteps (we hope?). Most importantly, I feel like my kids are accepting and inclusive children. While I was exposed to more diversity than they were, they were exposed to enough of it that I believe they are openminded and inclusive. Like me, they are shocked by how closed minded some of their friends are at college…they feel badly for them to have grown up in a bubble and are grateful to have grown up in a community with diversity…not just racial diversity, but religious diversity as well.

As I have read through the recent posts about segregated schools (not by law(, this story kept popping into my mind so I thought I would share it.

3457

California appears to be experiencing “white flight” on a statewide scale, or at least in the high population (urban and suburban) counties. The K-12 population in California urban and suburban counties is typically around 15-30% white these days, according to https://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/ . The statewide K-12 population is only about 23% white (and 54% Latino).

What it means is that segregation or integration of schools as measured by presence of or contact with white people is largely becoming irrelevant in California (it is not like the “white flight” went to the next suburb, since it has probably gone to another state); any relevant discussion of the topic with respect to California may have to focus more on how segregated or integrated the various other racial and ethnic groups are.

3458

And to be fair, people chose the communities in which they are most comfortable. Some prefer those which are unidimensional ( wealthy, single or few races and high SES), others like diversity, blend of cultures and foods and love having their kids in schools with many kids from many places. Some move to a town due to proximity to work, or the schools, they don’t think much about the race of other people (often they are similar). I think people focus on a single or set of issues ( house size, land six, schools, proximity etc).

We chose a town that is very wealthy, a bubble so to speak. There are people of many nations here and many own businesses. But there are few African American ( a few professional sports athletes and other high income folks but not enough based on demographics) or Hispanic families( almost zero). Many people come from other nations and are first generation. This cannot be discounted either. We didn’t chose it based on the race of the people who live here. We chose it due to proximity and we found a house here we liked.

So while I am comfortable where I live and chose it for various reasons. Others chose other things. My grandmother lived in a area with a single ethnicity. Was it good? bad? Does it matter?

I have heard people of all races say they want to live near others like them. Honestly, that makes me cringe. I don’t care what race people are. I don’t chose my neighbors or friends by their race. And honestly, I don’t care where anyone is from as long as they support schools, and a good community.

I have lived in very mixed communities all across the world. I haven’t seen anything very different. You can live in Paris or Timbuktu and people still sort themselves by wealth. There are very few areas where there is a true mix of people. And sometimes the wealthier ones can make the assumption they are living in a diverse community when someone else on their block is living a parallel life without comfort and ease. You cannot live in a million dollar condo and cross the street to a project and think that your lives are similar. They are not. Even kids in these schools rarely mix. Though at least there is some exposure both ways.

3459

There really is a huge fallacy about “good schools” vs “bad schools”. Yes, conditions in some schools can make it very hard to attract or retain good teachers. But whose fault is that? The Abbott districts in NJ get over $30,000 per child to spend, and no amount of money ever seems to change anything. The schools alone don’t make outcomes bad; dysfunctional communities make bad schools. Dysfunctional families send unprepared kids to schools. If your parents care enough to move you out of a dangerous or terrible school system, even to a safer but mediocre district next door, I’ll bet that has more of an impact on your outcome than the school itself.

There is a school district within driving distance of our home that has a program for the deaf and Hard of hearing. It looks like a great program, and the town is near the shore, surrounded by million dollar communities. I found the program thru the State education website. I drove by the school - the building was gorgeous. The Board of Ed had its own huge building across the street. Wow, we don’t have anything like that in my “wealthy” community. I asked my daughters audiologist about the program, and got the side-eye. “ That’s not the place for her” and then “it is a VERY ROUGH school”.
I went back to town. I went to a very popular pizza place for lunch. There was 2 inch thick bulletproof glass around the cashier, like a token booth in the NY subway. On one of our many ER trips, we went there (about the same distance as the other “big” hospital) and 15 brand -new doctors came in to listen to my daughters chest. “We don’t get many pneumonia’s down here, and this is a really impressive one” “we get more trauma, stabbings, and people stepping on glass”??

The district has TONS of money, but the town around it is dangerous, violent, and who their right mind would move there? Too bad, because we could really have used a program like that - something we will NEVER get in my “good” school district. Why? Because the truth is, the schools don’t do anything they don’t have to do. When my daughter needed assistive technology, we were told that “that is the kind of thing many parents choose to donate to the school or purchase for themselves”. Kids who breeze thru school (like my first two) get exactly what they need - nothing. They work their butts off at home. People whose kids struggle more complain about being “surprised” at needing to hire tutors, “because we moved here because the schools were supposed to be so good”. And for kids like my youngest, with a basket full of low-incidence disabilities, they get as little as is legally permissible. The schools don’t make your kids smarter than they are, and the teachers don’t teach everything to everyone - they teach some, and some kids get it, and the rest have to figure it out on their own, or with help. In rich towns, the schools don’t teach better, they just work with kids whose parents can help at home, or get them help. In rare cases can the schools compensate for bad parenting and a chaotic home life, and that is mostly due to the type
of child who finds refuge in school, not necessarily anything special about the school.
Families matter. Communities matter. I used too be such a huge supporter of public schools, until I realized that we didn’t pay for a better school, we just paid to live near parents like us. So although I will continue to support public school done right like the magnet schools in NYC and my area of NJ, I can’t be anything but cynical about the “born in the wrong zip code” line. No one is forcing families to live in bad school districts. And “good” school districts are highly over rated.

3460

Cost of rented or purchased housing in the non-bad school districts often limits those with lower incomes to living in bad school districts, especially with other constraints like commuting to jobs, etc…