I stumbled across this article in Harvard Magazine and found it to be quite intriguing.
<a href=“http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/090443.html[/url]”>http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/090443.html</a>
<p>That was really interesting. But how more in depth could this go? On the application where your ancestry comes from. What generation American are you. It could get really crazy.</p>
<p>It's not like they've just discovered a flaw inside a miracle. By advocating affirmative action, they are already utilizing a technique that is only skin deep. Looks like Harvard just dug themselves into another hole :o</p>
<p>And the hole will continue to get deeper.</p>
<p>duh!!! ... This reminds me of one of those articles where after years of research and spending millions of dollars, they discover something obvious, like teenage boys think about sex alot.</p>
<p>There were some articles in the Wash Post fairly recently about how immigrants of color react to the standard American racial labels. In America, you are black if you have any black ancestors, but in other country, you are white if you have any white ancestors. Thus, there are immigrants moving here who have always considered themselves white, but who are now labeled black. In addition, black persons from South and Central America don't want to identify themselves as African Americans. (Hey, I'm from Brazil.) Also, there is a controversy between the use of the words Latino and Hispanic. Latino implies an ancestry is from Latin America while Hispanic implies an ancestry from Spain. Some of the people who consider themselves Latino are deeply offended by being called Hispanic. </p>
<p>IMO affirmative action would be better based on socioeconomic status, but there are no special-interest groups pressuring lawmakers to give special consideration to poor whites. I guess we need another hundred years to go by before all of this stuff becomes moot.</p>
<p>What I wonder is what is going to happen to admissions when whites become the minority. Texas this year passed over to whites no longer the minority. I think its now 5 states where that has happened. Then will whites get special preference in admission?</p>
<p>whites in texas are only not the majority when you add up all the minority constituancies, meaning you group chicanos with blacks and asians. We can all agree that these groups don't share much. Therefore, whites are still the majority race in Texas.</p>
<p>If you mean where the white state population becomes a minority, then that would only increase the demand for the new majorities or what we now call URM's. Think about it. If whites are the minority in a state, but the average school (in that state) has, let's say 60% whites, isn't that a bit of a problem?</p>
<p>I think that this article also proves that the term URM is flawed and exposes the failure of elite schools to seek out poorer whites and blacks. </p>
<p>Below is the Times article.</p>
<p>"Researchers at Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania who have been studying the achievement of minority students at 28 selective colleges and universities (including theirs, as well as Yale, Columbia, Duke and the University of California at Berkeley), found that 41 percent of the black students identified themselves as immigrants, as children of immigrants or as mixed race."</p>
<p>
Haha, yeah, it's like that joke:</p>
<p>When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to 300�C.</p>
<p>The Russians used a pencil.</p>
<p>The idea mentioned in the NY Times article that colleges not only have to consider skin color, but also have to basically consider whether the applicant has a purely Amercan black hertitage dating back to the civil rights movement is bizarre. Instead of trying to set up rules to benefit the "correct" people, why not just have them come in with a list of who they want accepted.</p>
<p>Thanks for the joke. I had never heard that.</p>
<p>I'm scared of whites NOT being the majority.</p>
<p>I guess I can see their attitude. If 13% of the US population is black and only 8% of the Harvard population is black, then it might be a shock to realize that perhaps as many as two-thirds of the "blacks" at Harvard are not who you thought they were, i.e. descendants of former slaves, but rather West Indian and African immigrants or their children. However, how many of the aggregate 13% are descendants of former slaves????</p>
<p>not to mention that west indians mainly <em>are</em> descendants of slaves, they were just enslaved by the british, and not americans.</p>
<p>Whether West Indians( descendants of slaves), African Americans, or Africans they are all help make Harvard diverse. Some Africans(Liberians) at Harvard are descendants of former American slaves. Consequently, therefore, arguments against Africans and West Indians shows the dirth of intellect shown in many postings here.</p>
<p>^^I believe you mean dearth, Mr. Intellect.</p>
<p>All I know is that my ancestors (Scots) were slaves to the British. Not to mentiton, that the Irish were persucated. Oliver Cromwell "left enough trees in Ireland to hang the Irish." However, I don't receive anything from them (not to make light of the situation). I guess events grow less important as times passes. Oh, how quickly the human mind forgets!</p>
<p>I guess I am saying that you can't try to erase your past misdeeds by creating all new ones. Affirmative action and the like, although once considered "useful," has long stayed its welcome. It has turned into a kind of reverse discrimination.</p>
<p>I will get off my soap-box now....lol</p>
<p>The scots were not slaves of the British. maybe the British were a bit harsh during the reign of Edward I. You see France and England's Plantagenets were fighting for control over Normandy, Aquitaine and Scotland. However, the stuarts of scotland starting with James I ruled England up to time of Cromwell and then after during the the Glorious Restoration.</p>
<p>You can't compare English and Scotish battle for dominance to slavery. I bet you believe what happened in Nazi Germany is the analogous to internal British wars.</p>
<p>Correction Scots were not slaves of the English since both are British.
Anyway, my point Harvard is going to be more and more multicultural due to the positive rise of Latino population in the US. more AA for Latinos.</p>
<p>cheers</p>
<p>If considering ethnicity in admissions is only about trying to help people who are emerging from generations of being held back by the social inequities of our country, then this is a problem.</p>
<p>However, not everyone believes that's solely what affirmative action is about. </p>
<p>If you think it's about getting diverse perspectives in the classroom, then a wealthy black or an immigrant black is as desirable as a poor african american descendent of slaves. </p>
<p>I think of myself, a white female who grew up with almost no contact with any blacks (lived in the semi-rural midwest). If college was supposed to widen my horizons, challenge stereotypes, and expose me to diversity, then you better believe it's a good thing my college didn't just focus its recruitment on the most "downtrodden" students of color who applied. They'd be doing students like me a disservice if the only "ethnic diversity" they served up was in the form of blacks who were underpriveleged, urban, and from poor schools. That would probably reinforce certain stereotypes rather than challenge them. The thing is, real diversity in a lot broader than that.</p>