<p>As a very minor nitpick, Justice Scalia is male.</p>
<p>I strongly disagree with your statement “…their [sic] is no such thing as becoming a “lesser” school by lowering nonexistent “standards”…”</p>
<p>First, you seem to be suggesting that standards do not exist. The exchange does not corroborate your point. Payton attempted to persuade Justice Scalia that Michigan did not admit unqualified students. He never attempted to convince Justice Scalia that Michigan had no standards. Of course, you may say that I quoted only a portion of the entire transcript. You’re free to try to prove me wrong (i.e. that during the exchange, Payton did at one point tell Justice Scalia that Michigan had zero standards.)</p>
<p>The stats of a student body are of course determined by the students that apply. A school can have a preference for high scorers, but if none apply, then its stats aren’t going to be very high.</p>
<p>Again, take a look at what Mr. Payton said in the oral argument of Gratz:</p>
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<p>“Qualified to the extent that we required students to be qualified to do the work…” Isn’t that a plausible definition of a standard?</p>
<p>"All the way through the process, the University works hard to build a diverse class. Even before filling out a FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid), high-performing students from low-income backgrounds are recruited to apply to the College. </p>
<p>**As applicants, these students are given preferences, with their social class acting as a “tip factor” just like race or legacy, according to Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67. **This year’s admissions process even boasts a new program to track applicants according to a “geodemographic” indicator that draws a spotlight to applicants with blue-collar-and-below zip codes, Fitzsimmons said."</p>
<p>If that is the definition of standard then yes, we can agree that standards exist. But if all students admitted are qualified to do the work, I don’t believe there are any “standards” separating those students admitted. </p>
<p>Note that I had a major problem with Michigan’s point system approach to admissions. The point system did create artificial post-qualified standards and in that situation, everything you are saying fabrizio was true. Under holistic policies this is not the case.</p>
<p>What about poverty among other races in this country? There is poverty among whites, asians, and latinas. Unfortunately it is connected to blacks, just like other negative connotations.</p>
<p>Hi, collegealum314, I asked you for evidence of your statement that colleges give “an admissions boost for being socioeconomically underprivileged.” You kindly posted a link to a Harvard CRimson article from 2003, </p>
<p>when this issue began to be much discussed. The article quotes Richard D. Kahlenberg, a Harvard graduate and editor of a compilation that included one of the articles I cited, responding that colleges may be overestimating how much they boost admission chances of low-income applicants, if at all. I give Harvard credit for attempting in more recent years to revise its financial aid and admission policies to respond to such concerns of its own alumni, but I would need more evidence from more colleges to conclude that “There is already an admissions boost for being socioeconomically underprivileged” is a correct description of most colleges in the United States.</p>
<p>^By post qualified standards i mean: Asserting that by admitting qualified students over other qualified students you can somehow lower standards is fundamentally incorrect. </p>
<p>Once someone is deemed “qualified” the “standards” for admissions are simply the needs of the school to build their student body. So everybody admitted, if everything on their application was truthful, meets the standards.</p>
<p>An interesting question will arise in the not too distant future.</p>
<p>Will hispanics still be eligible for affirmative action when they are the majority of students in school.</p>
<p>The new projection said Hispanics will be roughly 30% of the overall population in 2042. </p>
<p>But long before that date, Hispanics will be a HUGE percentage of the student population. The birth rate for Hispanics is much higher than other major ethnic groups. Thats an important reason why the percentage of Hispanics in the overall population is increasing so rapidly.</p>
<p>Will the government be able to continue affirmative action for Hispanics when they between 25 and 50% of students?</p>
<p>African American students compose a great deal of the inner city public school population and still may benefit from AA. The rationale, in part, of AA isn’t about percentages as they apply to total population, per se, but the disparities and those factors related to race, etc, between various ethnic groups and disparities related to gender. While the Hispanic overall population is rapidly expanding, quality of life, and factors that impact standard of living considerations aren’t closing the gap in various forms of economic and other disparities at the same rate, I would imagine. Thus, depending on the influences on the various branches of government, that will determine the continued validity of Affirmative Action as we understand it now.</p>
<p>If the majority of children in America is none white, it will be hard to justify maintaining affirmative action programs to maintain “balance”. </p>
<p>If AA ends for hispanics, it will also end for African American students. </p>
<p>AA is an idea that started in the 60’s when the African American middle class was small. The intention was to devevop “role models” for other students to follow without the benefit of a “leg up”. </p>
<p>Almost 50 years later, the “leg up” is still there. </p>
<p>There is now a vibrant African American middle class. The last two secretaries of state have been African American. The candidate of the Democratic party is an African American. </p>
<p>There is still racism in America, but discrimination against Mormons according to polls is greater than that against African Americans. </p>
<p>It is hard to justify AA continuing in these circumstances. </p>
<p>African American’s under perform academically, not because they are not as smart, but because they don’t try as hard. This is shown by years of academic research by the Nigerian scholar Ogbu among others. </p>
<p>Many [most] African American students don’t want to “act white” so they don’t try as hard. They don’t have to try as hard, because of AA. If AA ended that would change the dynamics of this situation.</p>
<p>Do a search on Ogbu, on this site … a number of book reviews have been posted. My was from the Harvard School of Education web site.</p>
<p>Ogbu has a lot of interesting ideas, most of which I agree with, but readers should be aware that his views do not represent the consensus of the academic community.</p>
<p>Ogbu neither said nor inferred that. Neither has Steele, Sowell, or Williams. The black middle class expansion was largely due to AA creating more opportunities and Af Am capitalizing upon those opportunities. There are many disparities between white america and Af Am and other people of color that are still readily apparent if you ar being objective. These disparities are still there when controlling the factors that working harder would have eliminated. You speak of 50 years with leg up. Well the majority has had both legs, torso, arms and head up for nearly 300 hundred years. That should make it about even now. You’ve cited the relatively paltry number of Af Am in positions of influence in government. A good thing, and I don’t want to trivialize those attainments, but not lets kid ourselves, these few anectdotal milestones are but pebbles in the larger scheme of things. We still have a ways to go, and AA is just but one small, very small tool to implement opportunity for those who still want to better themselves and their families/communities.</p>
<p>Many of those who detest AA simply are ignorant of the historical policies that have set the platform in which they benefit from. Trust me, it was more than just “hard work”, God fearing, pull themselves up by the bootstrap people and good fortune that created the form of democracy we enjoy now. There was a WHOLE lot of hatin’ goin’ on too. That “hatin’” has created and perpetuated many of the attitudes, behaviors and policies that continue to create the disparities between peoples here. </p>
<p>Maybe some in academia, government, and business understand that and have set policies accordingly in an attempt to mitigate those wrongs. Obviously those that are impacted negatively or those that may believe it stigmatizes those benefitting from such policies would be in opposition. Maybe what is needed as opposed to all the vitriol and frustration expressed is understanding, grace and compassion. As I’ve emphasized so many times, this country has been so prosperous (in spite of itself in some instances) and has so many opportunities. If a mindet continued to be based in the attributes aforementioned, AA would be less vexing to you. One could come to realize that there is still alot of “pie” left after the AA portions have been divied out.</p>
<p>I subscribe to a point made by Sowell, a person who isn’t a supporter of AA by the way. He said:</p>
<p>“One of the implications of universalism is that those who are more fortunate need not be any more deserving than those in misery. For some, this suggests an imperative for redistribution of wealth, while for some others it may suggest a sharing of the knowledge and the development of the habits, priorities, and values that would enable others to create wealth for themselves. For those of us that believe the latter, simply giving people things is counterproductive from the standpoint of getting them to become productive themselves. Nor is what is given likely to equal what the recipients could have created for themselves if the sources of productivity had been shared, rather than the fruits.” </p>
<p>I beleive that AA, arguably imperfectly administered, provides the sources of productivity whether it be education, job opportunities, business ventures, housing, etc, for those marginalized by their race and gender, regardless of their socio-economic status. It is not the absolute of pure meritocracy nor welfare state, but a hybrid of policy that incorporate merit with gracious opportunity. The challenge is in formulating the policies that create the greatest good for all.</p>
-That’s disputable, but nonetheless the black middle class is still only about 2/3 the size of the white middle class. And the black middle class is the most fragile of income brackets, “Last hired, first fired”. </p>
<p>Other than that everything rabblerouser said was baseless, insufficiently supported, and absurd. Unfortunately, many people who haven’t seen any statistics or aren’t interested in exploring the issue further share that misguided belief.</p>
<p>I’ve read the Ogbu study (years ago), & do find it relevant for <em>k-12</em> education, as a study of motivation, achievement – but most especially, parental attitudes: That was the primary revelation in the study which involved a migration of blacks to a particular suburb offering better educational opportunities.</p>
<p>HOWEVER, (again, as I said earlier), the Ivies & other elites are not interested in bodies for bodies’ sake, without strong motivating factors being in the mix. Despite some misinformation on another unrelated thread, the Elite colleges are called that for a reason. They admit (largely) highly qualified, capable, & driven students with excellent background/preparation. That is the assumption any prof goes by when conducting his or her class, setting up assignments, choosing book lists. HYP and peers is not a dumbed-down or remedial curriculum. Now, as a <em>separate</em> admissions track, the HEOP programs such as Columbia’s, do admit under- or barely prepared students, a significant percentage of which are URM’s (including Latino). They do not compete in the general admissions pool, and their progress after enrollment is monitored & supported with tutors, etc. But that is not what we are talking about here. For general, non-supported admission, the families in Ogbu’s study would not be interested (mostly) in applying to Ivies – would not be motivated to, & doubtless would not be accepted, BECAUSE of their lack of motivation. The URM’s who get admitted to Ivies are those who have demonstrated consistent drive & success with that drive, despite whatever challenges they have had. They may not have had the test prep $ & opportunities, nor the h.s. curriculum supporting that, that ORM’s have had, but they have likely taken tremendous academic initiative & been a high performer in their environment, as well as possibly shining in difficult e.c.'s, etc.</p>
<p>I dont know if Ogbu, Steele, Sowell, or Williams have said that. John McWhorter, however, claimed, I can attest that in secondary school I quite deliberately refrained from working to my highest potential because I knew that I would be accepted to even top universities without doing so. Almost any black child knows from an early age that there is something called affirmative action which means that black students are admitted to schools under lower standards than white; I was aware of this from at least the age of ten. And so I was quite satisfied to make B+'s and A-'s rather than the A’s and A+'s I
could have made with a little extra time and effort.</p>
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Sowell strongly disputes this. He [url=<a href=“http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2637]states[/url”>http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2637]states[/url</a>], What of the idea that affirmative action has helped blacks rise out of poverty and is needed to continue that rise? A far higher proportion of blacks in poverty rose out of poverty in the 20 years between 1940 and 1960 – that is, before any major federal civil rights legislation – than in the more than 40 years since then. This trend continued in the 1960s, at a slower pace. The decade of the 1970s – the first affirmative action decade – saw virtually no change in the poverty rate among blacks.</p>
<p>Glad to have you back in the discussion. Could you please list some other critiques of Espenshade and Chung’s 2005 paper? To my knowledge, Kidder’s paper is the only one, and what’s more, his paper did not dispute the much despised +240/-50 findings, only the equally hated conclusion: “Asians are the biggest winners when affirmative action is ended.”</p>
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<p>You’re talking about the Ivies. I don’t have data for those institutions. I do, however, have some data for UMichigan.</p>
<p>According to the Center for Equal Opportunity, “In terms of probability of admissions in 2005, black and Hispanic students with a 1240 SAT and a 3.2 high school GPA, for instance, had a 9 out of 10 chance of admissions, while whites and Asians in this group had only a 1 out of 10 chance.”</p>
<p>Now, I know you’re going to say that I don’t get it, that this isn’t Asia, that stats aren’t everything, and so forth. Indeed, stats are not everything. However, I find it very, very, very interesting that those black and Hispanic students had a significantly greater chance of admission compared to their white and Asian peers despite equal SAT scores and GPAs. And, I find it very, very, very unlikely that those black and Hispanic students were SO much more interesting and SO much more driven than their white and Asian peers.</p>
<p>I’m sure you’ll see some stark contrasts to the points you were trying to make with Sowell’s Op Ed. In the article you linked, Sowell has mixed some stats, with people’s personal opinions, and isolated examples to make a point. My point is that AA has helped elevate and grow the Af Am middle class across a spectrum of standard of living considerations including educational access and the link Fabrizio provided does not refute that.</p>
<p>I don’t think epiphany was trying to say that blacks who get into top schools are more driven than their white counterparts–just that they are driven enough that Ogbu’s study isn’t really relevant.</p>