"Race" in College Applications FAQ & Discussion 12

Applying to College
4321

@milee30 silly of me to think we could make progress. You’re right. And women will never be able to vote, either, right?

No, things aren’t perfect and nor will they every be…but they can be better and we should keep trying (wow, and I’m a capitalist, too, go figure!)

Just because we haven’t made ENOUGH progress, doesn’t mean we can’t keep making more progress. You can’t be so black and white about things.

Are you saying we shouldn’t have bothered with the Civil Rights Act because minorities will never be treated fairly so why bother?

Can’t you see the progress we are seeking and indeed making is a very slow process, one step at a time?

Compare where we are today with where we were 100 years ago…more people have more rights because of the baby steps we have made. I look at AA as a baby step.

There will always be cynics, but hopefully less and less as more educated people start speaking up against false stereotypes that some closed minded and ignorant people perpetuate.

Yes, I’m more optimistic than you, I guess. Maybe the people you surround yourself with will never stop questioning the worthiness of people that might have benefited from AA. Maybe you need new friends that are willing to look a little deeper than the color of someone’s skin.

As @privatebanker pointed out:

“Somebody had to walk into the doors of u Alabama that first day. And today’s kids one generation later are walking into hpysm and everywhere else. The next generation it probably won’t even be noticed. Eventually it will all even out. But for now, i think it works.”

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why there are people so threatened by programs that help underserved communities. It’s a win/win to help educate more people, to keep people healthier…all part of having the strong middle class that we so desperately need.

And people need to stop creating unnecessary fear by tossing around words like “communism”. How about the very premises that this country was founded on…that we are all created equally, separation of church and state…

4322

@milee30 Ok. First off my daughter lived in Florida and I lived in New England. It was the opposite of a helicopter parent situation. It was actually a very tough situation you know nothing about. So it probably makes sense to keep your comments to your views of an issue. Differ with me all day. That’s ok.

But personalizing it with incorrect assumptions isn’t a good look for you at all or CC polite.

If you want to end affirmative action and let chips fall where they may, it will have no impact on me it pretty much most of the people I know.

Like I said I am torn. But it’s only a philosophical torn.

But I can tell you first hand, direct from wealthy “white guyland”, that the people I know and work - from a very extensive network and set of experiences - spend about zero.zero minutes a day grappling with the complexities of aa and sizing up people.

They just with don’t spend a whole lot time talking about these issues. And a few more spots for for Jimmy is just fine. Just not a problem and not a concern.

So I am 100 percent onboard with whatever you come up with in this area.

I was just trying to open up an interesting dialogue. And to also offer a bit of honest insight and perspective from inside the pretty much all white private country club and an elite industry type environment. Honestly. I’ve never once heard anyone question the background of a peer who happens to be black. Ever.

But I’ll leave it to you to figure out.

4323

What does recruited athlete for undergrad have to do with medical school admissions?

4324

The point @hebegebe is that many people get in to great colleges because of a hook…recruited athlete being the biggest hook of all. So therefore, if someone is questioning a doctor’s ability because they are black, for example, the question is would they question a white doctor’s credentials who possibly got into medical school because they were a recruited athlete to Harvard which helped position him/her well for medical school?

If someone gets into medical school because of AA, they still have to get through the program and pass boards. And if they get into an American medical school…they are SMART. There are plenty of real ways to check credentials. I personally always check credentials for my doctors, no matter what their race or ethnic background is.

4325

Race? What about Wyoming? The 10 high school seniors in the state have their choice of any school they want in the entire country. They could probably attend a different one each month and still even the most elite college would open their doors just to add that last state to their Institutional Research page. How is that fair? I say we start a thread asking about Wyoming in college admissions.

4326

@lostaccount great point! And yes, there are just so many different hooks out there that make things less “fair”…in your example, the college of course feels that geographic diversity makes a student more attractive than a student with equal or better stats from a more popular state. If they feel this will enhance the student community and that the student will make it through the program, then IMO that is ok.

The point is that there are so many other hooks other than race/ethnicity that are giving people advantages in college admissions. If we are looking to do away with AA, then we need to look at other hooks as well if we are trying to be completely “fair”…which I guess would come down to test scores because that’s the only “objective” measurement we have to go by…

4327

We have talked about the pros and cons of AA on this thread and I have heard compelling arguments both ways. AA is more of a “black and white” issue for me and it comes from philosophical and historical perspectives. Historically, I have read and seen instances where policies have been put in place that gives advantages to certain groups based on gender, race, beliefs, etc. From policies such as “separate but equal”, denying women many rights, Jim Crow laws, Redlining, Ivy League quotas on Jewish students, and now AA, one common thread for all of them is that they all were trying to give a particular group a leg up or possible hold a group or groups down for what was considered to be the betterment of an organization or society. While some may believe that it is harsh to put AA in the same category as those other policies, one of the main features of AA divides Americans into an “Us versus Them” discussion.

Philosophically, these grey areas have always bothered me personally, because there is not much that the groups negatively affected by the policies could do but to fight the policies through the courts. I believe that there are positives that come out of AA, but there will be some from those previous eras who believe there were positives that came out of the policies that are now a part of our countries past. When I think about what Americans 100 years from now think about 2019 AA policies in college admissions, I just see them looking at it from the same perspective as most now see early 20th century policies on race and gender in America.

4328

You have made a good point, but the biggest difference is that anyone of us could move to Wyoming, but can anyone of us become an African American, Hispanic American, or Native American?

4329

@changethegame What were the positives of “separate but equal”, denying women many rights, Jim Crow laws, Redlining, Ivy League quotas on Jewish students?

The ONLY program in your list that tries to give a group a leg up is AA. Every one of the others aimed to hold a group down.

4330

@ChangeTheGame - we are on the same page. Each year in school from the earliest age, we teach our kids about Dr. King’s Dream. Then our kids reach adulthood and discover that it was all a big lie. Skin color makes quite a difference.

You can’t have a multicultural society with racial preferences. They are inherently decisive no matter how good the intentions.

4331

@OHMomof2 When those laws/policies where enacted, it was actually argued and many believed that separate versus equal was a positive in society at that time. I know a small subset of African Americans today who would take a separate but equal (give me the money and let us create our own schools) stance to fix our educational system for those youth. The arguments for Ivy League Quotas was of course about keeping the number of Jewish students below a certain threshold, but it was for the “betterment” of the school to have a large percentage of Christian students. Today, those arguments do not hold much credence, but those arguments were out there. The lack of women’s rights (for the betterment of men), Jim Crow laws (for the betterment of Southern whites) and AA (for the betterment of African American, Hispanics, Native Americans, and Native Hawaiian groups) all fit in the same narrative.

4332

@ChangeTheGame “Separate but Equal” never meant equal. It only meant separate, in practice.

And keeping Jewish people out indirectly benefits those who aren’t Jewish, but the point of the policy is still to keep one group down.

4333

@tpike12 You might want to read all of that speech - and perhaps more than just that one - before you decide MLK was anti-AA or it was all about a color-blind world.

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/publications/knock-midnight-inspiration-great-sermons-reverend-martin-luther-king-jr-10

We can’t quote for than 3-4 sentences from any one source in a post.

4334

This is coming from a white person…I just feel like without AA we are just opening the door for more white or at least rich-person preferences. And, forgive me for attacking my own people here, but if those same white people were losing their spots to Asians (which based on test scores they would), I feel like somehow they would figure a way out to make sure that didn’t happen (hire the right lawyers, maybe?).

I’m sure someone on this thread has done the analysis, but if we did away with AA, anyone know what the percentages of blacks would be at the Ivy League, for example? Not that the Ivy League alone will dictate the future state of our nation, but I’m wondering how different the schools would look.

But again, I can’t see the justification for doing away with racial preferences (to overcome years of suppression that most people can’t argue with) and not doing away with other preferences such as athletics, geography, athletics, etc.

@tpike and @ChangeTheGame I so appreciate your perspectives and am somewhat fascinated by them. What exactly do you mean @tpike12 by “Then our kids reach adulthood and discover that it was all a big lie.”. Really? Where and how? I am truly trying to understand what you mean by that to educate myself better, not because I am doubting your first hand experiences.

4335

That is the only reason that Separate but Equal statue was struck down… If is was equal in 1954, the Supreme Court would not have struck it down at that point.

4336

But the same speech is located on many different sites, @tpike12 .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFbt7cO30jQ

4337

Hopefully it would have been struck down eventually. I would think it would have.

4338

Like @OHMomof2 wrote… @tpike12 skin color makes a big difference as it is still much, much harder for a black kid to make her/his way into a prestigious college than it is for an overrepresented majority kid. There are countless reasons for that and if you want to find out more I would suggest you read what Dr. King had to say about that…

“It’s alright to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”

Dr. King

4339

I’m not sure what your point is? That the SC is always right? That there was never “equal” (which is what I said)? That it existed at one point but not another?

4340

I was just trying to say that the SC did not rule that “Separate but Equal” was illegal, they just ruled that the school district in question was not equal.

@collegemomjam I believe it would have been struck down just like you do…