@SatchelSF, I don’t agree to it being childish. This lawsuit is about “taking spots away” or having more for one people group. And my concerns are not to be dismissed as 'not a reasonable debate in this public sphere." My issues should be debated on dismissed. I have brought up some significant concerns. You all now that I am NA, It would be very interesting if you would publish your race here and I can truly ‘know’ where you are coming from. This thread is about race, let’s jump in. As for the idea that should we or shouldn’t we tolerate race discrimination in society, I would assume you are part of the dominant race to not have any idea that whether we think it should exist or not means a hill of beans. When you are not "the right colour, many times a day, it is felt. You are living in a different reality if you thnk race discrimination will go away because you think it will or believe it will! This is a reality for everyday life for people of colour. I always worry when I am told by a non-native to “not worry”. Learned the hard way about that.
And yes, we do get to go into restaurants, stores and malls, but just based on your skin colour, have you been treated rudely at a restaurant? What about being followed in a store? A mall? Discriminatory practices are all around!
No, @going4three, I really don’t agree that the lawsuit is about taking spots away. I think it is about whether we want to have different standards for different groups based solely on race, which I believe is - and should be - impermissible in a multi-racial society. If you look at my posts, you will see I am not opposed to quotas, if necessary for political harmony. Quotas are not great, but they can be understood and do not carry the implicit baggage that one race is doing poorly because of another.
You’ll also find that, although I am far from an expert on Native American history, I am not unsympathetic to Native Americans at all (see, e.g., my post #1360 above); in fact, I worked professionally with a well-known clan leader and other Native Americans both inside and outside the USG in a high profile treaty claim some time ago (subsequently resolved successfully). PM for details if you are interested.
I do think you are getting more nervous than you should be about litigation like this, and its potential to impact Native Americans. There is not a chance in the world that individuals who have faced actual privation and difficult conditions - such as Native Americans living on reservations (even reservations in New York State, for instance, in which the wealth from casinos is so great that each band member received a free house and college scholarship opportunity!) - will not receive an appropriate “boost” in their admissions chances under holistic admissions policies. Of course, the Elizabeth Warrens of the world should be rightly concerned
@going4three I don’t know your struggle as a NA in America, but I have had my own. Everything that you mentioned in your post has happened to me as well. Those bouts of racism where/are wrong and what is happening to Asian-American students in elite admissions is wrong and we should speak that truth. Holistic practices can be done better or must at minimum be explained clearly (how race factors in admissions). I believe that there isn’t anything that the Federal Government can do with regards to admissions practices at the most elite schools (Harvard as a private institution could tell the Feds they don’t need there money (take a hike) and charge full sticker price for everyone or just live off of the $30,000,000,000+ endowment and continue to raise money from their Alumni).
Aside from mismatch, there are some other unintended consequences to the heavyhanded use of racial preferences in admissions. Preferences tend to engender and perpetuate a spoils-system mentality that is at odds with our putative meritocracy (however tempered by holistic considerations). That is, once a given group has a certain “share” of the admitted student body, that share will tend to remain constant, changing only in response to political winds or legal battles such as the Asian lawsuits—as opposed to following a random walk, reflecting the natural variation in talent from year to year.
And not all of the groups fighting for spoils are listed in the CDS as races or ethnicities. For example, legacies are given preference*, as are athletes, development cases, and VIPs. At elite schools these groups will have a much higher concentration of white students than the student body as a whole. White hooks may be a tangible presence of “white privilege” on campus, significantly lowering average white stats and making it appear that even unhooked whites have a much easier time getting in than Asians (e.g., the SAT score gap between whites and Asians noted by Espenshade). I think there would be much greater pressure to eliminate such “affirmative action for whites” if affirmative action proper were scaled back.
Some years ago, the Yale admissions director tried to downplay the significance of the legacy hook, noting that the legacy SAT average was only a couple points below the school average. This argument might have validity if the legacy cohort had the same racial and socioeconomic mix as the student body as a whole, but since legacies skew to white and high SES, an apples to apples comparison would show a significant legacy advantage.
“softer” subjects (sociology, ethnic studies, political science, etc.).
I don’t think they’re are too many URMs in political science, maybe ethnic studies. A lot of it depends on the college but poly sci, government etc. are pre-law majors, lots of reading, analysis writing so you’re prepared for law school. Let’s just say that the popular majors are the ones that are designed for athletes or courses where athletes are recommended to take.
@theloniusmonk wow your post is highly offensive. My URM DD (see my profile pic of her freshman move in) is a Poly Sci major at Penn. When she interned for a congressman last summer, they pulled her off the phones and put her to actual WORK because she was miles ahead of the ALL WHITE rest of the interns in the office. She is currently interning for a voter integrity foundation in Philly, also the only person of color and has been thrown right in, given autonomy and responsibility. Her URM friends are in STEM, econ, and Wharton. Her opinion of most ORM students is that they are lacking in critical thinking and leadership skills because they only trained to score high on tests. They underperform in real world situations. And the institutions see that - my last time at the Penn bookstore there was a text on Emotional Intelligence front and center.
Apologies if my post was taken offensive, my point was that political science, government, history, are rigorous majors. Note that you also make generalizations about ORMs, which could also be interpreted as stereotyping.
But Satchel does make a good point, there are more URMs in majors like ethnic studies, psychology. Here’s the percentage of graduates by race/ethnicity for a few of these:
ethnic studies - 35% are URM, 44% white, 9% Asian
psychology - 29% are UM, 65% white, 6% Asian
business - 35% are URM, 53% white, 12% Asian
The question of whether Universities can maintain a preference for URM’s is settled law. See FISHER v. UNIVERSITY OF TEX. AT AUSTIN. The court ruled quite clearly,
This is a very recent decision and is not likely to be overturned. I feel there is almost no danger that the slight bump received by people of color, Native Americans and others will be jeopardized. What might be at risk is any potential bump that white students have over Asian students. If the evidence reveals such a preference – not for benefitting any group but for limiting the numbers of a specific group, the court will have to find whether that kind of diversity also complies with the college’s legitimate interest in a racially and culturally diverse campus. Honestly, I think this could go either way. The court wrote.
This language could be used to imply that the University is justified in limiting the presence of any specific group in order to create a well rounded student body. However, it really is a hard sell to state that one over represented group (Asians) should be restricted in favor of another over represented group (whites).
Personally, although we are white and would be hurt by such a decision, I believe there is no justification in limiting Asian acceptances in favor of white students. I do, however, fully support the continued bump for URMs. None of this in any way endangers other holistic applications measures.
“A sad offshoot is very URM student at an elite school is looked at as if they were a charity admit”
Actually, many, many people don’t think that way. If you are surrounding yourself with people that do, time to broaden your circle to include folks capable of more rational thought.
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@ChangeTheGame, You stated exactly how I feel but more cogently. Sometimes I think the AA does more harm than good. I fully support financial based help because to me, education is one way you can move up financially for any race. Also, I do see time to time some African American students with awesome stats for any race, so that they would have gotten in without AA hook, but I wonder how these accepted kids feel when they might wrongly be viewed as having gotten in because of AA hook.
I received a friendly warning from the host so I hope this is not political and refers to the prior post. No student at any school should be looked at as different in any way once they graduate. I think I am okay with this comment and don’t think it political.
Do students accepted because of a URM or First Gen have similar stats to the rest of the pool? In other words, do they have the same table stakes but simply better odds in the lottery? Or are their stats appreciably lower then the unhooked candidates?
If they are lower, do they perform as well during their four years at college? The answer to that question is really crucial. If the kids with lower stats perform indistinguishably from the other students, it says a lot about the predictive value and usefulness of those stats people covet so much. If they don’t do as well once admitted, then is the experience accomplishing its purpose?
wow! @picktails Sounds like you don’t want anyone to stereotype URMs, so why are you doing it to ORMs? Can we agree that sterotyping of all kinds is bad? It’s a myth that ORMs are only trained to score high on tests. I don’t want to see this myth propagated. All the ORMs I know have lots of passions and interests that run the gambit. Some People just want to see ORMs as stat chasers. Let’s retire any sterotype please of all racial minorities. It’s more ignorance than truth.
@gallentjill, URM stats are, on average, appreciably lower. The current case in which Asians are suing Harvard for discrimination sites “a 2009 study done by Princeton sociologists that concluded while the average Asian-American applicant needed a 1460 SAT score to be admitted, a white student with similar GPA and other qualifications only needed a score of 1320, while Blacks needed 1010 and Hispanics 1190.”
Unfortunately, performance in college, predictably, tends to follow the difference in the stats which reflect the quality of preparation. The corollary is that as college graduates, URMs are viewed with suspicion by prospective employers and graduate schools (the frank reality which is not PC to admit and is anathema to many on this thread). This is particularly harmful to the URMs who would have been admitted on their merits had there been no AA and are tainted with the same brush.
It is unclear whether AA is accomplishing the intended purpose or doing more harm than good.
I write this as a URM, who is very cognizant of the realities in todays educational and work environments.
Putting aside for a moment the wisdom of accepting students into a school where they are not prepared to succeed, I don’t see why URM’s who are able to achieve should be viewed with suspicion by graduate programs or first employers who have access to their transcripts.
@websensation I find that I am in the minority among African Americans I know (my wife doesn’t even agree with me), but I have evolved into my position over the last 10 years. I have been told it is easier to take that position because my children have always tested in the top 1-2 percent of all students, but I would think it is easier to live with the status quo since it would be easier for my solidly middle class black children to get admitted into elite schools.
@gallentjill Fisher vs. UT was always a case that had weaknesses (Fisher was a weak from a stats perspective when comparing her to other rejected students and the policy of auto admitting a certain percentage of top students at each high school across the state was never going to be an easy challenge). Settled law is not the word I would use as states can also decide which route to go (California and Michigan are 2 such states that have removed race a factor in their Public Institution admissions decisions by a vote of their citizens).
@ChangeTheGame It is “Settled law” in that a very recent supreme court decision affirmed the right of a university to employ such policies. Nothing states that Universities must consider race, only that they may do so. Of course, the Court has the ability to overturn its own decisions, but it is highly unlikely to do that in this case. I think it is much more likely that they either fail to take the case and let society evolve for another decade or so, or craft a decision preventing colleges from disadvantaging one ORM for another. I think it would be a real reach for them to find a significant societal interest in limiting the number of Asian students in order to accept more White students.
We have the answer to that question for law school, and the results are truly shocking, as in I believe that people would be shocked if they understood just how much lower the stats are for URM entering law school, and just how much worse they actually perform while in law school.
Sander in 2004 examined all available data, practically every single law student in the United States, and concluded that the average academic index for black students (Sander focused on blacks because they received the greatest preferences in admissions by far) was more than 2 standard deviations lower than white students at basically all schools. This lower level of preparation/ability was predictably reflected in their grades (92% were in the bottom half of the class, and fully 50% were in the bottom 10% of the class iirc), and in other important metrics like law review membership (despite affirmative action at all major law reviews), dropout rates, and subsequent bar passage rates. Bar passage of course is an extraordinarily crude measurement for the elite law schools. My guess is that the overwhelming majority of nonpreference admits to the top 14 law schools could have passed the toughest bar exams out there even prior to taking their very first law school class (so long as they spent the 6 or 8 weeks in the same cram courses that practically all law school graduates take). In that sense, bar passage should in no way carry any significance in trying to figure out what is actually required intellectually to do the work of a lawyer in one of the “prestigious” roles that so many aspire to.
The data that Sander looked at were from the 1990s, but the very latest data available (from 2011-14 entering classes) confirm that essentially nothing has changed. See, e.g., https://www.lsac.org/docs/default-source/research-(lsac-resources)/tr-17-01.pdf, especially Table 5. The data there show that the actual average GPA for first year black law students is more than 3 standard deviations below the white mean. For all practical purposes, that means we are looking a completely bimodal distribution. (That level of GPA implies that fewer than approximately 2% of black law students are even equal to the white GPA average, which is consistent with an even worse relative performance than Sander found in looking at the data from 25 years ago.) People’s eyes glaze over regarding statistics, but those who even have a basic understanding will realize that we are essentially looking at two entirely separate pools of ability.
Table 7 in both studies is also extraordinarily illuminating, as regards the overprediction by undergraduate GPA of law school grades, especially for black students. Not only do black students on average come in with undergrad GPA on average a standard deviation lower than white students, but they do even worse (by another half standard deviation!) than their GPA alone would have predicted. There are a number of interpretations here: (1) their undergraduate coursework was relatively easier than other groups’ coursework and so is not as predictive; (2) their majors were “mismatched” to the intellectual requirements of law school; (3) they were “affirmatively graded” in college and so the grades are not representative (there is no reason to a priori assume that preference is limited to just the admissions stage in college); or (4) they encounter discrimination or other special factors (perhaps including “stereotype threat”) in law school but not in college that affects black students alone (although there is of course some overprediction for Hispanics and other groups, but not to such a large extent). There may be other reasons of course (and all of these reasons could be in fact in play at least for some students), but those strike me as the most plausible. Obviously, the students themselves would be likely to focus on (4) above (cf. the current brouhaha at Penn Law), but it is hard to see why this would occur at law schools, which are overwhelmingly liberal. In any event, why would it be worse in law school specifically as compared with the undergraduate campus experience that generated the predictor variable (UGPA)?
This is a difficult situation. I can say from experience that past the college and law school worlds managing partners at law firms face almost incomprehensible pressures in trying to balance the needs and expectations of their clients and other partners (who all say they want diversity) with the actual ability of the recruits, which ability will be monitored and ultimately billed out at extraordinary dollar amounts. Of course, it is not all URM hires. There are some terrific URM lawyers out there, likely that portion who would have been admitted to their law schools without preference. They not only do well in law firms - they excel and are coveted to a degree that is hard to convey to outsiders. But, for many URM, the law firm is the very first time they are actually being judged on standards that have not been lowered for them, and there are some truly sad stories out there (you can google about Yolanda Young for an example of someone who has nevertheless made lemonade out of lemons). For people who are interested in the dynamics of URM and law firms, I can recommend Sanders’s “The Racial Paradox of the Corporate Law Firm,” available here: http://apps.americanbar.org/buslaw/newsletter/0060/materials/ch1.pdf.
