<p>@PantherPride: To be honest, yes and no. Recognize that this is the United States. Take a short walk outside campus and you’re pretty much stepping into a melting pot, though most areas have a majority population. I feel rather isolated at my school, which is actually kind of nice because I get a view of events and other topics that normally I wouldn’t hear/know about or experience. Though I’ll likely end up at an evenly populated university, I’ve actually realized lately that I’ll miss this atmosphere. It’s much more educational, etc.</p>
<p>@Sleeet I guess what it all comes down to is personal preference. I can’t sit here and try to make you view things my way because you have your own outlook/opinion on things. </p>
<p>In the end AA helps some or hurts others, depending how you look at it. Only thing I despise about it is that some people tend attribute a URM’s admittance to a college like Stanford primarily on the fact that they are a URM.</p>
<p>@Panther
But try to look at it from others perspectives. </p>
<p>A rather average student, few As, few Bs, taking above average classes (not nearly the most difficult) getting 2000-2100s on sats, and family making 300k+ somehow makes it into multiple elite universities. (not legacy, not athlete) How does someone make sense of that? Sure one case might be exceptional, but when you see multiple cases like that around you… it just gets too much to not suspect that racial AA has something to do with their admittance. </p>
<p>I know i can’t draw anecdotal evidence to prove anything, but this is basically what i saw last year from my school.</p>
<p>All three kids come from exceptionally rich families, 300k+, URMS, no athletics, no legacy, no outstanding ecs.
One person is famous for cheating on everything, 1900 sats, top 20% of our class, Gets into UPenn while getting wait-listed at multiple IVYs.
Another person exceptionally average, <2000 sats, even got a B in AB (almost no one gets Bs in AB in our school) got into MIT
A third person basically mirrors the second person. </p>
<p>When I systematically see these “exceptions”, it makes me a bid angry on the inside. There are lots of other kids who have worked much harder, and even suffered through much more hardships than they did. When people come from such privileged families don’t even take full advantage of their opportunities, but somehow still get in over more hardworking students, it just doesn’t seem fair to me.</p>
<p>/end rant</p>
<p>^ Life’s not fair bro</p>
<p>^^ And therefore we should take it as it is? Should’ve told that to MLK.</p>
<p>Well if thats how you roll, I’m fine with that. I still reserve my right to feel strongly opinionated about this issue.</p>
<p>Instead of being an Asian Male with all around excellent EC’s and scores with a decent concentration in the sciences, I want to be a not-so excellent adopted blaxicanese girl of a black lesbian war heroine who was discharged because she broke DADT, but would have won the Medal of Honor otherwise.</p>
<p>Sarcasm and exaggeration aside and no offense meant to any of those who fit any of those characteristics, but really. Asian males are the college applicant of which their is the highest supply and lowest demand.</p>
<p>@freezingbeast I completely agree how that is very aggravating, although I’ve never encountered cases like that at my school. But you could also look at it from my perspective, where people say “Oh, well you’re black so you’ll get in anywhere,” as if I didn’t work hard throughout these four years of HS and all I have to make up for it when apply for college is my skin color.</p>
<p>AA is a flawed system. There are many loopholes (Ex. Someone that’s 1/16 Jamaican and labels themselves as black in their app? Complete Bull), and people that didn’t have any hardships do reap the benefits. However it’s not our decision, but rather the decision of these higher institutions to diversify their campus. Unfortunately, its one of the few options available to accomplish this.</p>
<p>I agree with freezingbeast. By the logic on which affirmative action was based, a purely income-based affirmative action should yield results somehow similar to a race-based affirmative action. However, I am not seeing this happening.</p>
<p>Thank you PantherPride! At least there’s one other person out there besides me who thinks that skin color still matters.</p>
<p>I was intimidated by Berkeley because of the lack of white and other non-Asian racial representations. I didn’t want to be a part of that. It just didn’t seem like America to me. I would never apply to an American university if I would be one of a literal handful of white people. For universities in foreign countries that’s another story. But universities in America should have American racial demographics.</p>
<p>^ You couldn’t be among a “literal” handful of people unless you are a Lilliputian, or you’re talking about Goliath’s hand. That’s what “literal” means: exactly as stated, without the metaphorical meaning you were actually employing. That concludes today’s free English usage lesson. : )</p>
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<p>@Senior0991: No offense, but how can you say something like that? America was composed majorly of whites and other minorities decades ago. Present times show that this country is a combination of many different ethnicities, with next to none being entirely dominant in number. Yeah, you can still label Caucasians as holding the majority of the population in numbers, but that fact is changing. America has always been an immigrant-made country, a land of varied culture.</p>
<p>Please, define “American racial demographics” for me and everyone else.</p>
<p>is AA ethical? maybe. is AA necessary? maybe not. does AA increase diversity? yes. does diversity improve the life of students? yes. are there better methods? probably. Go become a researcher or admissions director and change it then.</p>
<p>
Yeah I don’t know why I used that word there bro. Slippage. </p>
<p>
I don’t know, somewhere around 60% white, 15% Hispanic, 15% black, and 10% Asian sounds pretty American. That said it’s really hard to keep the Asians out, so numbers like 50% white, 13% Hispanic, 12% black, and 25% Asian are probably more realistic. </p>
<p>Berkeley has 4% black, 12% Hispanic, 32% white, and 43% Asian (not to mention 8% unknown, possibly Asian). That’s un-American in my opinion. Needs more black and white, less Asian.</p>
<p>Back on this board again.</p>
<p>Anyways, as an intro, I am against AA. I have stated my rationale previously. But, I object to the following quote. (#192)</p>
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<p>1) Regarding the first chunk of Socratic dialectic: If you agree with that statement, then AA should be rendered unconstitutional for schools receiving federal funding (so no, not HYPSM) based on the Fourteenth Amendment. Check my back posts for that.</p>
<p>2) Regarding your suggestion about changing it: Any sort of study you might perform would likely be flawed in that there would be too many extraneous factors. It would lead to an inability to conclude anything about the effects of AA going either way.</p>
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<p>Senior0991, I hope you’re being purposefully flippant here, because this is the paradigm of the sort of stereotypical, racist sentiment that those who protest affirmative action are objecting to. If colleges are looking to improve the diversity of a campus for the sake of a well-rounded, diverse student body with a varied range of opinions and backgrounds, the very last thing they should do is take a blanket, racially based approach. If admissions officers assume that the more races you have, the more viewpoints you’ll have, and to increase overall diversity they must balance the population on a racial basis, that necessarily implies that they believe each race brings a unique but homogenous contribution to the college campus. Thus, taking your approach, affirmative action would by definition be a racist policy.</p>
<p>Affirmative action can only be effectively implemented when taking a holistic approach and actually examining each applicant on an individual basis, rather than acting on the assumption that because a student is black, he or she is “diverse.” </p>
<p>Also, regardless of your sentiment, the way it was conveyed was incredibly racist, and the embodiment of the reverse discrimination that people cite when they object to the disadvantages Asian Americans face when applying to colleges. If you really want to support the sentiment behind affirmative action, I would suggest making less blatantly racist and objectionable statements, which actually make it more difficult for the rational and logical supporters of affirmative action to support their case.</p>
<p>^bro I’m going to bed, but first I want to ask how the f*** was my post racist? Look up the definition, you’ll see it wasn’t racist at all.</p>
<p>Don’t throw weighty accusations like that around. That’s incredibly disrespectful and unintellectual.</p>
<p>
Why don’t you look at the context of my post again. I was talking about which racial demographics I and others would feel comfortable around and accordingly which ones I will support. </p>
<p>Would you call me a sexist if I said I wouldn’t feel comfortable at school that had 80% guys and 20% girls or vice-versa? No. Would you call me a sexist if I didn’t support that school’s admissions policy? No. So why then are you calling me a racist here? </p>
<p>
Again you’re talking about different things here, but I will say that because a student is black, he or she adds to the number of blacks on campus. The effect of this cannot be understated. </p>
<p>
Am I so bad for wanting to keep the numbers of Asians under control at top colleges? Again, whatever college I attend I want to be a good representation of America. I want Asians, blacks, whites, Hispanics, Native Americans, and internationals all in the right amounts. To me whatever school has 45 or 50 percent Asians is not American.</p>
<p>Freezing beast I really dont understand what point u were trying to make, I just wanted you to know I wasn’t intimidated…I’m not pulling any social justice card I’m just showing him the same data he tried to use to prove his point I can use to prove mine better (its called “confirmation bias”)…You completely ignored the trend I stated which was evidence for it not being reverse discrimination (black enrollment steadily declining) </p>
<p>For the record AA policies are illegal in California and I took my time to point out that it is obvious Stanford does not practice them considering Asians only make up 3% of the American population and 12% of California yet they are anywhere from 23-30% of the undergraduate class.</p>
<p>My rant and my response to your post is pretty unrelated. The response to your post was only to say that the data was useless because variables were not controlled.</p>
<p>AA policies are not illegal in California, they are only banned in publicly funded institutions (ie. University of California, CSU, and etc) </p>
<p>As for the population percentage discrepancy, once again I have to ask what are you controlling? Pure percentages means nothing. </p>
<p>Also, keep in mind that the situation you mentioned was created in part due to racism. Immigration quotas for East/South Asian nations for the past 130 years have been extremely strict. The end result was that only the educated upper-middle class was able to gain citizenship in the U.S, creating a skewed population. (so much for AA fixing past racial grievances)</p>
<p>I think the problem with the system is that it assumes Asian and white kids have all the opportunities in the world, while the URMs are always underprivileged.</p>