<p>Link?</p>
<p>10char</p>
<p>I thought we weren’t supposed to attach links but whatever</p>
<p>[YouTube</a> - Mad TV - Job Interview.](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYYAvPjNmYY]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYYAvPjNmYY)</p>
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<p>It’s fine to give people a boost? So if Candidate A is poor and black, and scored 50 points less on the SAT and has a GPA lower by 0.3 than Candidate B, who is a Deerfield graduate, it’s okay to “give a boost” to Candidate A due to his circumstances? But isn’t that what you and Sheed are opposing, letting the “disadvantaged surpass those who are actually qualified”?</p>
<p>Unless, of course, you’re convinced that poor minorities with 2.5 GPAs and 1800 SATs are getting to Harvard. If so, then provide the proof before making strawman arguments.</p>
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Yes, but not because he is black.</p>
<p>^^ what if he was just black, and was financially and economically equal to the white student?</p>
<p>Then obviously not.</p>
<p>^^ and as AA favors the black student, AA is misused and unfair.</p>
<p>of course, no two circumstances will ever be identical except for race. but im just stating my opinion.</p>
<p>The Jews came in and we were minorities. We had quotas from Harvard and other schools. But you know what? We worked our butts off and did something about it. Jews are still minorities, but not benefited by AA.</p>
<p>Now the Asians have been coming in. When they first came to America, Asians were a minority. And guess what they did? They worked their butts off, and did something about it. Look where they are now. Asians are still minorities, but not benefited by AA.</p>
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<p>That’s a grotesque comparison.</p>
<p>Jews, while greatly discriminated against in Europe, did not face comparable anti-Semitism in America, and certainly nothing like slavery and Jim Crow. And Jews are not a visible minority, meaning that they’re a name change away from blending into the white masses.</p>
<p>As for Asians, many are university-educated middle-class immigrants, not desperate refugees or whatever. So why shouldn’t they do well? Are you so pleasantly surprised that the American system actually allows qualified minorities with university educations to succeed like qualified whites with university educations?</p>
<p>Actually Jews faced a great deal of discrimination in admissions at elite schools beginning in the 1920s as their numbers rose. Administrators at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton talked openly of “the Jewish problem.” Sound familiar? That’s because the same language was used by Nazi Germany.</p>
<p>True.
On a side note, I was not the one to draw parallels between Jews and Blacks or Asians and Blacks. Rather, you, nbachris, were the only one to make a connection. But your idea of Asian immigrants all being wealthy is false. They are now, but let’s take a look at where they started:</p>
<p>Among the very first Chinese were poor males who worked on the railroads. They were referred to as the “Yellow Peril” and yet another “inferior race”. Ever heard of the Chinese Exclusion Act? One-of-a-kind immigration law. Most of the immigrants were male, and laws were actually passed in the US forbidding Chinese men to marry White females.</p>
<p>Eventually they made chinatowns and banded together in response to blatant racism. These had chinese-founded restaurants as well as associations which helped additional Chinese immigrants get established. Eventually some moved out of the Chinatowns and into more ‘white’ businesses and society.</p>
<p>After this financial base was established, the next generations used the benefit. Students came in, parents encouraged their kids to do well in school (some of my friends say their parents do a little more than ‘encourage’, lol), and watch them do so. Then an even stronger economic base was established.</p>
<p>Chinese, Japanese, and then Filipinos were ‘imported’ to Hawaii in the 1860’s as a source of cheap labor for sugar cane plantations. The owners of the plantations imported East Asians of many different races so that the workers would not unite and rebel.</p>
<p>And hey, nbachris, I’d appreciate it if you changed your tone a little. It seems hostile (but maybe I’m wrong, of course, because I can only read the words, not expressions) and derogatory, something that shouldn’t have a place in this kind of argument. Thanks.</p>
<p>josh333, good post.</p>
<p>nbachris,</p>
<p>1) asians do not come to america as middle-class immigrants. they come poor and ready to work hard.</p>
<p>2)yes, the jews did face open discrimination just as weasel had stated.</p>
<p>3)"The Jews came in and we were minorities. We had quotas from Harvard and other schools. But you know what? We worked our butts off and did something about it. Jews are still minorities, but not benefited by AA.</p>
<p>Now the Asians have been coming in. When they first came to America, Asians were a minority. And guess what they did? They worked their butts off, and did something about it. Look where they are now. Asians are still minorities, but not benefited by AA."</p>
<p>actually, thats not a grotesque comparison, but a quite valid one.</p>
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<p>I suspected that this is the case. Why consider race when you can consider income? Theres no reason other than to maximize the amount of minorities entering universities. Quite frankly, its asinine. If they use income, they will still get racial diversity; just to a slightly lesser extent. </p>
<p>But why even racial diversity? Can socioeconomic diversity do as well? One can make the argument that having a socioeconomically stratified student body would result in a diversity of world-views and opinions, and that diversity of of skin color ceterus paribus equates to a diversity that’s not even useful; there is no difference between a rich white person and a rich black person; in fact rich blacks are more likely to culturally relate to rich whites than poor whites. That alone should be enough to justify taking race out of the picture. After all, colleges are only trying to benefit themselves and their students, not minority groups.</p>
<p>Great post Josh333. There seems to be some kind of misconception that Asians have it easy in America. We went through hardships too, and still deal with similar racism problems with African Americans. Why then should asians be left out of AA? In fact, with all this news of China as America’s rival emerging, I don’t see it getting any better for us asians in the future either.</p>
<p>I have to add to the Chorus of voices against that stereotype of Asians. When my parents moved here we lived off of nothing. My mother worked full time at an Alterations shop and made enough money to start going to university in Canada. She put herself through university from Undergrad -> PhD with that money, money from a part time job, and scholarships. Now, three years after, she works at one of the best private computer programming companies in the US (SAS Inc.) and makes $80k a year.</p>
<p>My dad was also in school the entire time.</p>
<p>As far as Asians are concerned I do feel sympathy for them, bc all the Asians that i know do work extrememly hard.
The overall point of this is not to legitmatize affirmative action or advocate for its continutation (I am republican) but to address the negative conception where a white or asian student gets rejected and immediately they blame AA. That sentiment seems pervasive here. </p>
<p>If you read the post carefully it follows a natural progression where I speak of the historical implication for its position, as well as the benefits of said programs and then the arguement from above is addressed, about displaced agression. </p>
<p>As a staunch conservative and black I feel that AA is detrimental bc of the connotation it attaches to minorities. I have worked hard for what i have accomplished, but when I get into a school. People will only think that I accomplished that because of AA, in fact this is Clarence Thomas’s experience after graduating from Yale and having no job propects.
That being said. I feel that the policy should continue on a combination of race and socioeconomic status, because as a high achieving minority I can fully attest to the fact that there are not alot of minority high achievers. So i have been continually in the environment surrounding more by Asians and whites than other minorities, and initially it creates a difficult environment.
But also alot of my friends are white and Asian and thier conceptions are minorities are well less than one might expect, and by having racial diversity sought it helps to breakdown psychological barriers, when students have to interact, in a collegial setting.</p>
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<p>But such a situation would require individuals who view each other as equals. How can a white or Asian person come to understand a black person when the white person feels he’s simply an AA-admit (at increasingly better schools, this becomes more prevalent and easily distinguishable)?</p>
<p>Further, it’s frustrating that accomplished blacks have a stain on them due solely to affirmative action. Take Barack Obama for example. Now I hate the guy because I’m a conservative and I find his record and shady associates to be deplorable. But I fully admit he’s an extremely smart man. Yet, I’ve had discussions where people, despite having heard him speak, believe he was an AA-admit to Harvard. This is atrocious and let me assure you these people aren’t racist.</p>
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<p>Do they also come across the Pacific in reed boats and wearing coolie hats, and marvel at tall American cowboy? </p>
<p>Many poor Asian immigrants also come to America with capital (to start a store, for example), pooled together from families back in the old country. You know, the kind of start-up money that banks regularly deny black Americans. </p>
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<p>As I said, Jews are not visible minorities. I’m not trying to belittle the history of anti-Semitism in America, but through relatively simple processes such as intermarriage and secularization, Jews are not easy as to discriminate against as blacks and other visible minorities. </p>
<p>The kind of discrimination one may face because somebody snoops around your genealogy, and the kind of discrimination one may face because of a socially-conditioned instinctive reaction to one’s unhidden skin colour, is different. Anyone who says otherwise probably has never been a visible minority in their life.</p>
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<p>I understand that in certain situations being a minority can be difficult. But in most instances, you’re simply being paranoid.</p>
<p>I took an electrical engineering course where, honestly, out of 120 people there was only about 30 whites and the rest Asian/Indian. This made me a distinct minority, skin color wise. Yet, in the labs and sections, I never felt out of place, despite many of the Asian students being immigrants. I never felt the TA’s thought I wasn’t as smart because of all the Asian “overachievers”. No one reacted to my “unhidden” skin color. The teachers didn’t belittle me or made snarky comments because I wasn’t Asian. </p>
<p>Again, I’m not belittling racism, but it’s highly overblown. It’s basically liberals making excuses for the failure of black America to become socially mobile. Like has been said before, other minority groups, including Asians who look as white as blacks do, have achieved wide-scale success.</p>
<p>And where’s the outcry about the lack of white NBA basketball players? Or the lack of white track athletes? Or the lack of white rappers and hip-hop producers? I think I’ll start complaining about that now. (sarcasm) Blacks faced overt discrimination in all sports, yet they overwhelmingly dominate sports now.</p>
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That’s not a road you want to travel on. Thoughtcrime rapidly approaching.</p>