<p>The reason that AA was implemented was to give African Americans (and other minorities) a socioeconomic “boost” to make up for the lack of opportunities they suffered during the early-mid 1900s (and of course before then too). The purpose of AA was not to give minorities an unfair advantage, but to make up for years of disadvantage. </p>
<p>Nowadays, although I can’t say that there’s no racial discrimination at all in society, there is far less than there was in the 1960s. Those who are disadvantaged in society today are not those who are of a certain ethnic background, but those who are, well, poor. Therefore, AA should be changed to favor the socioeconomically inhibited, not the “racially” inhibited. (Yes, that’s supposed to be satirical).</p>
<p>There is a considerably higher percentage of minorities who are below the poverty line than whites, but there are also a lot of African Americans, Hispanic Americans who are quite wealthy and who should not be benefiting from AA. Similarly, there are many Asian Americans and white Americans who live in poverty and whose opportunities for advancement are almost nonexistent. I’m a white Jew and my family is lower middle class. There’s no rationale for an affluent African American who has gone to private school all his life to be given preferential treatment over me. A lower middle class Hispanic American should be given the same chances as me, and an Asian American living below the poverty line should be given a better chance as me. Why should anything else matter? </p>
<p>If I were a minority I would be insulted to be given preferential treatment based on my race–it’s tantamount to saying that minorities are inferior to whites, which is the same racism that AA was established to counter in the first place.</p>
<p>Well stated from the first word to your last!</p>
<p>I would only add colleges do have the right to seek diversity within their student bodies by non-deterministically considering a candidate’s ethnicity to the same extent they consider other non-merit based factors such as legacy and wealth.</p>
<p>I agree, but there is a flaw in that system. Where does one draw the line between one that receives a boost in admissions because of the money their parents make and those that don’t? What happens to those kids at the border and just miss that mark? It just increases the problems imo.</p>
<p>In theory wealth preference should be eliminated because they are too subjective. But in reality, they do serve as a revenue source. Some flaws you have to live with.</p>
<p>No it’s not that so much. It’s what point you draw the link: 10k, 25k, 50k, 75k family income. Then people would be angry at that because who justifies the line where it helps you and it doesn’t? What about the people that make JUST above the line? It gets complicated at that point and has the same problems as the current system, if not more.</p>
<p>have colleges consider not asking for one’s race on the application? Instead they can replace it with an income bracket. If they really want to know the race and ethnicity for statistical purposes, they can do that after the process</p>
<p>Really? Race would be the best judge of one’s cultural influences??? I think educational attainment of parents, average income of neighborhood, educational opportunities provided at public schooling would provide much more insight about one’s cultural surroundings. You don’t think those would tell more about a given person’s cultural advantages or impediments than race?</p>
<p>Nonsense. Either you’re misremembering, or AdOffice redefined “high academic performance”.</p>
<p>Despite enormous incentives, nobody has ever found the unicorn of a “hooked” preferred admissions category (of statistically relevant size) that performs as well as the regular admits. In the other direction we have an endless parade of gloomily consistent reports of underqualification and underperformance, from community college to the Ivy League (including some from the Ivy admissions directors themselves!).</p>
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<p>The generalizations (if that is what they are) were accurate. Helpful is in the eye of the beholder.</p>
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<p>The opposite is true. Colleges enroll populations, using what amounts to (and with today’s software, sometimes literally is) a statistical approach, with individuals regarded as fungible.</p>
<p>Affirmative Action’s original purpose has been corrupted and at this point is getting to become one more window for entrance into the Ivies for the children of upper middle class either here or from abroad.
The fact that rich foreign “students of color” abuse the concept shows how badly it has served the minority needy students that supposed to serve.<br>
Now, it’s true that most people would try to exploit the system if it remains inflexible after so many years. Same it’s true for the athletic “hooks”. Who can blame them? </p>
<p>What was true of the sharp social inequities of the 50s and 60s is not true anymore.</p>
<p>The major problem for a system like that is that gives plenty of bonuses to the "fortunate” student of color but it doesn’t demand much in return.
Why and how to “give back”?</p>
<p>We know that after 12 years of substandard schooling not even a smart toddler’s mind can survive such harsh conditions and indifference by the adults.
When there are high school graduates that didn’t learn the multiplication table how can they survive as College students even in a community college.
Not much good will do AA for such a teen graduate!</p>
<p>So here comes the giveback not only for the beneficiaries of AA in college admissions but any FA student that benefits directly or indirectly from a government/public policy.</p>
<p>There should be required community service by college students serving the future generation of possible Affirmative Action students so they will not have to depend on nothing but their own skills.</p>
<p>Teach a minority student how to fish. Don’t hook for him/her the fish taken from another hard working young person. </p>
<p>A.P.</p>
<p>p.s.
The nonsense research about relationship of intelligence and race is almost funny in today’s world. Comedic tragically sad for someone that lives in Northern Ireland.</p>
<p>What nonsense!</p>
<p>Are the Irish Protestants more intelligent than the Irish Catholics when both were killing each other’s neighbors for so many decades?
Is the Ashkenazi in Israel really less genetically smart than the one that lives in the USA?
Are really the blacks of the Virgin Islands or the Caribbean genetically smarter than the blacks living in the USA?
Race is not a factor of intelligence or success in college but other factors are: Quality of primary and secondary education, socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds and environments, etc.</p>
<p>AdOfficer would know better than you. Check her long history of posts on this, particularly in the subcategory of <em>athletes</em>. Not even most athletes admitted to the Ivy League & similar reach U’s are underperformers prior to admission, let alone after.</p>
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<p>Nope. They seek out individuals within selected populations. They can cherry-pick within any desirable group they choose, because there will be high-performers in each group.</p>
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<p>Citations about these “gloomily consistent reports,” please. Won’t find it at the Ivies I have in mind, certainly not trends, en masse, increasing numbers, etc. There’s always an occasional underachiever once admitted, at most any school with an enrollment more than one. Nothing new and “trend-setting” about that.</p>
<p>AdOfficer has never suggested that athletes, as a group, are anything other than below average academically.
Nor did AdOfficer ever claim to have spotted the unicorn of “high academic performance” (by athletes, as a group) at his institution or any other. What AdOfficer has done is enthusiastically recommend the Game Of Life study documenting athletes’ underqualification and underperformance. </p>
<p>Here are some of the nicer things AdOfficer has said about the performance of athletes:</p>
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<p>So much for the fairy tales of “high academic performance”. Here is what is what AdOfficer has said about more specific deficits:</p>
<p>Affirmative action should consider all of the handicaps/advantages a candidate has had to date. Social class is, I think, the biggest, but race has not gone away. Black and hispanic students of all classes still struggle against subtle (and not so subtle) discrimination.</p>
<p>Well, siserune, thankfully you are not a forum administrator, so you have no legitimacy to delete postings of mine that reaffirm that Admissions Officers have reiterated evidence that athletes continue to perform well after admitted. She never said that they were the top academic performers of the undergraduate class, nor did I say so. Rather, she, as well as others, have asserted that athletes at reach schools (not state schools) continue to earn 3.0’s and above and that such GPA’s are not uncommon for non-athletes as well, particularly in the most demanding colleges, against well-prepared students. She’s saying that they’re holding their own, which is all I ever asserted. Plenty of previously high-academically performing students prior to entrance are later outperformed here and there by athletes and other classmates.</p>
<p>At universities for which sports is still a major draw, you will not see a strict academic merit system for admission. Sports is part of the merit which qualifies a candidate who will be dedicating much of his next four years to that aspect of the U’s campus life & priorities.</p>
<p>High academic performance is the same thing as holding ones own? Please tell me that I have either misunderstood you or taken your comments out of context because to me, those two are definitely not the same.</p>
<p>Nobody, whether or not they work in an admissions office, has ever shown evidence of a preferred admissions category (in this case, athletes) where being in that category isn’t a negative statistical predictor of academic performance by all measures.</p>
<p>That’s the “unhelpful generalization”, as you call it, that you are contesting. If you have any information that counters this generalization, and that information can be located, read and evaluated by others, where is it?</p>
<p>What I would call unhelpful is to deflect objective questions about relative performance (is athlete population GPA lower than non-athlete GPA?) with the subjective non-answer that the athletes “perform well”, “can handle the work”, “hold their own” or other unevaluable expressions.</p>
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<p>As you said: “check her long history of posts on this, particularly in the subcategory of <em>athletes</em>”. I found all CC posts by AdOfficer containing the word ATHLETE, ATHLETES, ATHLETICS, PLAYER, PLAYERS, or RECRUITED and none of them include the material you claim to have seen. If there are, in fact, repeatedly posted remarks from multiple admissions officers that invalidate my unhelpful statistical assertions, where can they be found and read?</p>
<p>thing is, Athletes have seperate talents that can make up for lackluster academics. It isn’t a talent to be from a certain background (unless you were a gang member that used to dodge bullets everyday)</p>
<p>The merits of various admissions preferences are a separate question from the objective results of those preferences. You can argue for or against athletic admissions, affirmative action, etc but it would be absurd to claim that the preferred student categories perform equally well.</p>