<p>Sitting on the sidelines of a hispanic family, I would say their cultural "impediments’ include those that first generation and blue collar kids have - an emphasis on getting a job and a priority on doing practical things. I will say there is not a slacker among them. Everyone is working really hard to get ahead.</p>
<p>The cultural impediments come equally from the ethnic group and from society at large. My daughter was being dragged off for ESL lessons - a decision based entirely on her name, not by having been referred by the teacher or any assessment. In high school she was actually asked if she was an exchange student because mex-americans don’t take AP classes. The schools didn’t see the hispanic kids as being capable of excelling.</p>
<p>My mother was educated in segregated schools. We are not so many generations removed from the educational disaster of segregation for its effects to be gone from a family’s life and home enrichment environment.</p>
<p>"Inasmuch as culture is your post-modern approach, then you do concede that there are significant cultural impediments in the black and hispanic communities that are impeding academic progress, all one way or another related to a lack of focus on education, and that these cultural impediments should be the focus of our universities rather than a shallow system of preferences based on pigment? </p>
<p>I would think you would agree."</p>
<p>I entirely agree, but there is no better solution. It is statistically shown that these cultures are mainly of these race groups. It’s just not efficient for colleges to research EACH AND EVERY student for their particular culture group, but race is a strong indicator. As a result, AA is important for equality between ethnicities in terms of college admissions.</p>
<p>Berkeley is a top-ranked public university that is not allowed to use racial preferences. The percentage of white and Asian students is quite a bit aways from 99%.</p>
<p>specifically devoted to that question. The short answer is that the federal government requires colleges to ask, although students are not required to tell. See the first few posts in the FAQ thread </p>
<p>I think you may have misunderstood my point.</p>
<p>By its very definition, Affirmative Action is about “affirming” for past sins. That’s why I don’t support the concept in college admissions. Because I don’t think past sins against a given race are predicatively relevant to a given individual who happens to belong to that race.</p>
<p>Diversity on the other hand is about inclusion and full representation of ethnicities and cultures. I do support this concept as a goal schools should strive towards when choosing a student body via the admissions process by including race as a non-determinate factor in a holistic evaluation of each candidate.</p>
<p>I just looked at UC Berkeley’s demographics from '08 and 77% were either white or asian and 8-9% did not say. So as you have probably heard, UC schools as a whole have had diversity problems.</p>
<p>College admission is not a reward for the students. The process is to yield each institution the type of students it wants to have on its campus. The schools at the top get first choice at who they want, and then it trickles down.</p>
<p>While that may be your opinion, according to the SCOTUS they are not the same. This was a major factor in the differing decisions in the University of Michigan Law School case and the University of Michigan Undergraduate case.</p>
<p>Nope. I note for the record that you didn’t provide any source. And note that your statement, as you have made it, contradicts the earlier statement with which I was disagreeing. Hint: how many IQ points is one standard deviation by the definition of how IQ test scales are set?</p>
<p>You honestly think I pulled those out my a$$? </p>
<p>Most of the people that publish this data are controversial (i.e. Arthur Jensen). It’s pretty difficult to find sources b/c people like to ignore the data.</p>
<p>Now the book is extremely controversial b/c it advocates a genetic explanation. But that’s irrelevant to the fact that racial gaps exists. See the summary of averages below:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Blacks in America average about 85, whites around 100, while Subsaharan blacks are around 70.</p>
<p>Okay, so first of all everyone disagrees with “the differences are several standard deviations” between the groups named above, because even the cited source just posted shows a difference in group averages of not quite two standard deviations. </p>
<p>Lynn’s work is rightly derided because it isn’t based on comparable data-gathering methods. Nobody has given an IQ test to a Homo erectus individual–that species has been extinct for a long time. I’m sure that no current, properly normed IQ test is validated for giving “general intelligence” scores to apes either. A good bit of what you quote is just ridiculous. </p>
<p>For references to much better literature on IQ testing, see the online bibliography “Books on IQ and Human Intelligence,” </p>
<p>You seem to think the IQ Test is a good test. But who says what intelligence is? Is it tangible? No. So who gets to say who is intelligent? Intelligence is different between people of all cultures and that’s why AA is justified. You take people from 3rd world countries and someone from your elite prep school and look at the difference in their perception of intelligence. Your “IQ Test” is situated around a Euro-centric framework and should be judged as so. Thus you see the scores come out as they do.</p>
<p>But I take care to refer to “IQ” rather than to “intelligence” in online discussion, because so many members of the general public assume that what is tested by IQ tests includes rationality–which is denied by psychologist Keith Stanovich, whose book is cited in the post I just mentioned. In fact, it is very possible for high-IQ individuals to engage in irrational cognition, and one often sees that in online discussions of IQ. James R. Flynn points out that IQ (psychometric “intelligence”) does not necessarily imply wisdom, making an observation concordant with Stanovich’s. This idea is very old, going back to the origin of IQ testing: </p>
<p>“There are, however, certain characteristics of age scores with which the reader should be familiar. For one thing, it is necessary to bear in mind that the true mental age as we have used it refers to the mental age on a particular intelligence test. A subject’s mental age in this sense may not coincide with the age score he would make in tests of musical ability, mechanical ability, social adjustment, etc. A subject has, strictly speaking, a number of mental ages; we are here concerned only with that which depends on the abilities tested by the new Stanford-Binet scales.” (Terman & Merrill 1937, p. 25)</p>