<p>Momsdream,
Remember that you are seeing a very unrepresentative segment of black parents. Your son goes to an elite private in Philadelphia. The relatively small numbers of black students at such schools, even in big cities, indicates that they are part of a group that self-selects for being highly motivated about and informed about educational opportunities. They also are a group that's likely to chart their own paths (elite secondary schools, doing test prep) instead of simply following what other black folks think is best.</p>
<p>NSM, do you have any data on the performance of biracial kids on the test? Since my observations show that black kids, no matter how well prepared and educated, underperform on the test....I wonder how biraical kids perform with the same influence? IF, in fact, bi-racial kids perform better than black kids then I would learn towards believeing that the "stereotype threat" might be true.</p>
<p>"Remember that you are seeing a very unrepresentative segment of black parents." True. I've only educated my son in at privates in Philadelphia and have no exposure to how black parents educate their children in less affluent schools or in other parts of the country. What's gnawing at me is these kids still underperform on the SAT.</p>
<p>By the way, when I refer to the kids I know in this situation, only a few are from our school. Most of them are scattered across many other privates and a few good publics. But, the end result is always the same.....so though this segment is not "the norm" for blacks, it doesn't stem from just one high school.</p>
<p>Momsdream,
I can not find any data on bi-racial students and the SAT. I have not seen any evidence yet that that info is being collected. It would be difficult to do research on this because I don't think that the College Board collects such data. </p>
<p>Anecdotally, though, I have seen the evidence. I once was in a position to see the scores of the highest scoring students at a historically black college. A very large percentage of these students scoring 1200 or higher were either from black immigrant families or were biracial. It was a far higher proportion than students in these categories were represented in the college as a whole.</p>
<p>In my area, each year, the newspaper publishes info about National Achievement scholars. Typically there are only about 3 each year. Virtually all were bi-racial or children of immigrants. In fact, I am not aware of any students who did not fit one of those categories.</p>
<p>Even those whom one might think -- due to names, appearance -- were not in such a category actually were. For instance, most people don't realize that my own kids are second generation Americans, with one (black) immigrant grandparent on each side of their family. Another black student from my area who made Achievement Scholar had an Asian grandparent, but didn't "look" Asian, so most people didn't realize the student was multiracial.</p>
<p>The couple of times that I have talked SAT offspring scores with my black Ivy classmates, I have noticed that the bi-racial offspring seem to be on track for National Merit, while the offspring of nonimmigrant African Americans seem to be scoring in, for instance, the upper 1200s. This was true even though the black parent of the bi-racial kids seemed to be the parent who had made the highest professional achievements, and thus was likely to be the parent with the higher IQ.</p>
<p>I would love to see someone do some serious research on this subject.</p>
<p>I would love to see it too. If black students fall victim to the "stereotype threat" (they don't believe they can do it, so they don't) then it would stand to reason that the biracial kids are performing better because they belive they can...due to the influence of the side of their heritage that isn't black. It's all a mind game....</p>
<p>"If black students fall victim to the "stereotype threat" (they don't believe they can do it, so they don't) then it would stand to reason that the biracial kids are performing better because they belive they can.."</p>
<p>What I thought was particularly interesting about the Steele article was that the highest achieving, most highly motivated students were the ones prone to be affected by stereotype threat. Steele suggested that they want so much to do well on the SAT that they second guess themselves, which hurts their scores.</p>
<p>When S was in tutoring for the SAT, the tutor kept telling S to stop overanalyzing the math section. It seems that most of S's errors were due to overthinking the problems. S is excellent in math, and took the SAT-related math more than a year ago. The SAT math should be easy for him. </p>
<p>When it comes to math, however, virtually none of the black kids in S's school -- including the others who are great in math and are planning on science careers-- take the toughest math classes even though they are offered those classes. Their impression is that they can't succeed in the classes even though the teachers say they can. S is an exception who takes the classes.</p>
<p>Last year, of about 30 students who sat for a higher level math exam, only one was black. That was in a school that is 80% black and one in which the majority of the top black students want to go into engineering or premed.</p>
<p>Well, NSM, my own high school experience was that I knew I could succeed, but didn't want to be segregated from my friends. I live in the Caribbean for a while as a child and then came here to attend an elite private elementary school. I hated being the target of racial hatred in the private school so I begged my parents to let me go to a public school for 9th grade, which they agreed to as long as I went to a magnet school. I did. But, I forgot to factor in that I was biracial and would realize racial hatred from blacks as well as whites. So, after a downright violent year in public school (and after I went to school each day prepared to physically fight off the attacks) my parents insisted that I try parochial school where there was a mix of races. But, parochial school was tracked. We had AP and then tracks 1-4. I was tested and placed in all APs and one Track 1 class. I found that I was totally segregated (again!) from the black kids....but it was worse because they were in the school...just not in any of my classes. I purposely started to "dummy down".....until I got myself to the point where I was moved into classes where there was a mix of kids (usually at the track 2 level - tracks 3 and 4 were mostly all black). Interestingly enough, when I took my SATs, I scored VERY high. I remember the counselor telling me (as she was handing me the SAT scores) that they should have forced me to earn the grades to stay in AP. This is the reason why I am so adamant about my son not attending a school where kids are segregated or tracked.</p>
<p>Momsdream,
Your post about tracking made me really reflect on my life and my sons' lives.</p>
<p>I started school in a small Catholic school in my not particularly diverse NYS small hometown. There was one other black girl in my class, and she was at the very bottom of the class. I was at the very top. I remember being embarassed that we were the only black students in the class and she had to be the class dummy. </p>
<p>I also remember that among the things that our teacher read to us was Little Black Sambo (which I found humiliating to hear) and an amazingly racist story about a black African "savage" child who was stupid and was repeatedly rescued by a white angel named (I kid you not) "Wopsie". Everyone except me in the class appeared to love those stories. Those and stories about how white missionaries were saving black savages in Africa were the only thing I learned in that school about black people.</p>
<p>When I switched to my local public school, which was one of the best public schools Upstate, my brother and I were the only black kids in the school. My brother is not very smart, and had flunked a grade, and he struggled throughout school. </p>
<p>In middle school, where I integrated the school, I was bullied by a group of girls. I am sure that I was a target because racially I was so different. It was a horrible experience, my grades dropped, and over my parents' and the schools' objections, I insisted on being put into a lower track. That helped me regain my confidence, so that by high school, I was back in the top level courses. I had great PSAT/SAT scores which, I think, did not surprise the school (which knew my IQ score, something I didn't know), but did surprise me because up til that point, I had not felt very smart.</p>
<p>I think that for me to have given my sons the kind of education where they would have flourished the best, they would have either needed to have gone to an excellent black private school (something that older son had for a couple of years when we lived in Detroit) or would have had to go to a Northeastern prep school, something that I wasn't willing to do because I wanted to enjoy my kids at home while they were growing up.</p>
<p>Anyway, this also reminds me that when younger son was in el school, for several years, he was one of 2 black males in his classroom. The other fellow was quite large, slow, and apparently had been held back at least once. He also was the type of student whom the teacher had to hold hands with during field trips in order to keep him focused and out of trouble.
I sometimes wondered if my son kept having to have the other kid in his class because S was exceptionally quiet and well behaved, and the school might have figured that since the teacher was stuck with an acting out, academically struggling black boy, it would be good to also give her a well behaved, high achieving one one.</p>
<p>S also tended to have in his class a black girl who appeared to have stayed back a year, and by her dress and behavior appeared to be neglected at home.</p>
<p>Both of those kids stood out because in general, the kids at the school were very well behaved, high academic achievers and had parents who were educated and involved.</p>
<p>Momsdream,</p>
<p>You said in post 113: "you have not been part of the history of this country as it relates to you race being treated as nothing more than property so that this country could prosper."</p>
<p>I hope you are aware that there is a long history of discrimination against and exploitation of Asians in this country, which began in the 1800's against the Chinese with, for example, special miners' taxes against them, exclusionary immigration acts that were not equalized until 1965, forced segregation into Chinese-only living quarters, dangerous and vastly unequal treatment of Chinese workers building the railroads and levees that were so important to the growth of this country, etc. Japanese-Americans had their lands and properties taken and were put in internment camps during WWII. True this is not exactly the same as slavery, but one does not need to diminish the historical experiences of other ethnic groups in this country in order to support affirmative action. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/racism.shtml%5B/url%5D">http://www.asian-nation.org/racism.shtml</a></p>
<p>And here is another link about stereotype threat:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ascd.org/cms/objectlib/ascdframeset/index.cfm?publication=http://www.ascd.org/publications/ed_lead/200411/toc.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.ascd.org/cms/objectlib/ascdframeset/index.cfm?publication=http://www.ascd.org/publications/ed_lead/200411/toc.html</a>
Click on The Threat of Stereotype link on that page.</p>
<p>I remember when my daughter was in 2nd grade she had to interview her grandparents on how life was when they were kids. She interviewed her paternal grandparents (as my parents were deceased).</p>
<p>Her grandmother told her about going to school in a on room school house in Fayetville, NC. During school they had to go out and gather wood for heat, watch the younger kids and even cook during school. Fo her going to school was a luxury because her mother worked as a domestic and her father worked in the fields.</p>
<p>The highlight of school was when they went out to sing. Her grandfather went to school "in town" in Wilmington , NC and told her the story of having to walk 2 miles to school during the time of the Jim Crow laws. He told my daughter that he was grown before he had a coat that someone else had not worm before him.</p>
<p>When they moved to NY he got a night job as a pressman in a dry cleaners and she worked days was a stock clerk in a department store. They took turns going back to school where she eventually became a teacher and he became a minister.</p>
<p>I told my daughter about my parents experience growing up in the rural south and how they both missed a lot of school because they had to help out when the havest came in. My mother always stressed to us the value of an eduation because when she finished 8th grade you had to go to high school "in town". She told us the only thing she ever asked her father for was to go to school and he told her that she could not afford it. My mother always wanted to be a teacher and the closest that she got to teaching was teaching us how to read, write and do math before we started school. I remember having a set of world book enclyopedias and the dictionaries had the green pages where there were spelling words at all grade levels and vocabulary words . She used to test us on those words once a week growing up. I mother was a firm believer in not continuing the cylce and said that her situation would never happen to her childdren. Even though there was 10 of us growing up 7 completed college (thankfully because CUNY was free, I remember starting college the first year you had to pay) While we were all smart kids, my mother knew nothing about the college process and the opportunites that were available. </p>
<p>When I became a parent, I knew that I was going to be an active participant in the educating of my child. I have always raised my child with the knowledge that many people have shed blood and died so that she could have the opportunities that she has today. I told her that Brown vs, the board of education was passed a few years before I was born. Because we lived in NYC, it did not have a major impat on my going to school but for others its was a monumentous occasion. For her the best way to honor her history is to do well in school, get the best education she possibly can and to excercise her right to vote.</p>
<p>There are days when I read these threads and the talks about AA always comes back to a black person taking someone's spot. But we tend to forget the blacks and whites that marched, were beaten and jailed to have the freedoms that so many others were able to take to take advantage of today. We tend to forget those word</p>
<p>Give me your poor and tired and huddled masses yearning to breathe free
It saddens my spirit that the same AA system that has helped so many, to hear those that have been helped by it now decry that same system. But yet we don't talk about the fact that blacks have not been the biggest benefactors of AA.</p>
<p>The one thing I loved about the south, was going to church, because someone always sang a song that lifted your spirits</p>
<p>So now, I will leave many of those who complain about AA , you need to be reminded of the old spiritual because at some level it is everyone's song.</p>
<p>How, I got over , How, I got over
My sould looks back and wonders how I got over.</p>
<p>Sybbie719,
That was a beautiful post. Thank you for sharing your thoughts so eloquently.</p>
<p>What you wrote reminded me of "Souls of Black Folks" and how DuBois used the sorrow songs. :)</p>
<p>What most elite college admissions represent today as far as I am concerned is Affirmative Action for white five-percenters.</p>
<p>Sybbie - I grew up in NYC in the first days after Brown v. Board - this is what I remember:</p>
<p>There was a magical day. It probably was in my third month in the first grade, at P.S. 131 3/4 in New York City. It was the day we were, for the first time, given our readers. The teacher was very excited, and it rubbed off on us.</p>
<p>But first things first: before the books were given out, we were divided into Bluebirds and Robins. I, praised be, was a BLUEBIRD! The selection was, apparently, not in the least bit random; we werent asked where wed like to go, and no one seemed to think it was important to inform us how the selection was being made. It was impossible not to observe that the few Black kids, who were bussed in from another neighborhood (this being the early days of school integration), were transformed into Robins; most of the Jewish kids Bluebirds. It was the beginning of the great sort. In the years that followed, it would be impossible for me not to perceive, even though the perception would quickly become dulled, that in my integrated schools, for the next eight years I would never encounter a single Robin, some of whom had been my friends, in any of my classes ever again. Some hidden hand was at work. It could have been malignant, or it could have been benign, but it was definitely thought to be beyond my comprehension, or at least not worth explaining to me. We picked up on it instantly: the Bluebird books had real words in them; the Robins only pictures. For the next decade or so the social message conveyed to me, when I bothered to think of it, was crystal clear: all African-Americans are Robins; so are the dumb kids. It didnt take much to form the expected syllogism, and no one would have considered disabusing us of the idea. (Dumb is a good word: Robins themselves were silent as to their predetermined fate. So was I.) Actually, however, forever surrounded entirely by Bluebirds, I was now safeguarded from having to think about it at all. Once a Bluebird, always a Bluebird; once a Robin, well, you get the picture.</p>
<p>My Bluebird book was Fun with Dick and Jane. Easy enough for me I already knew how to read, which afforded me the luxury of actually thinking about the book itself, though I am sure that at the time my questions were only half-formed. (That they really didnt need to be teaching me to read, and that they would all take extensive credit for having done so, was one of the great deceptions that only later I realized surrounded much of my so-called education.) Where was Dick and Janes house? It didnt look anything like the dwellings in my neighborhood, and certainly unlike my row of attached houses, mine in the middle, which meant long walks around the block with the push mower before I could cut the grass on our little 12 by 15 patch. (Who mowed the lawn in the Dick and Jane family?) Did Sally go to preschool? What did Dick do for a living? Why didnt anyone have a last name? What kind of dog was Spot? Did they have any difficulty with Jane being allergic? My mom was very allergic to dogs and cats, which disappointed my father, who yearned without ceasing for a canine. And why did everyone speak in only two- or three-word sentences? Was this how it was in their town?</p>
<p>Actually, if given the opportunity and had I learned how to ask, I would have wanted to know how Dick and Jane and Sally and Spot got to be in my Bluebird book in the first place, and why someone thought it was important that they be there. Where did all those blonde people come from? (We only had one in my class, Susie Feldman, with corn-silk pigtails, and I had a crush on her. Thank Heavens she was a Bluebird!) Who put these books together, and how did they get made? (Many of these questions lingered in my head for the next two decades until I became a book publisher.) </p>
<p>There was an entire culture of silence that settled in around my reading experience. My ability to read, to demonstrate repeatedly that I had mastered the skill, was raised almost to the status of religion, or at least to magic. There was silence as to method (for me, the method was irrelevant in any case, as I had already acquired the tool independent of it.) There was silence as to intent why did they care whether I could read? There was silence surrounding the social organization of learning to read (the Bluebirds and Robins) and the larger dimensions suggested by this form of social organization.</p>
<p>My learning to read, and the social construction of the experience fit inside a larger social construction: school itself. I attended them for a very long time, but oddly enough, I learned very little about them, other than what happened at my little desk and those few others I could see. This was true for me at 6, and it was true for me at 16, and I was an honor student! I didnt know who the teachers were, really, how they were chosen, who paid them, or how much they earned. I didnt know where they learned what it was they were teaching (and certainly there was no opportunity for me to evaluate whether it was correct.) I didnt know who chose the textbooks or the curricula, why they chose it, or how they were obtained. I didnt know why subjects followed in what sometimes seemed like illogical order (is it is really biology, chemistry, and physics because thats how they fall alphabetically?) I didnt know who built the school, who owned the school, or why it was shaped the way it was? I didnt even really know exactly why I was there (I figured out very early I could learn all the stuff in much less time if and when I wanted to, so why did I have to be here?) I hadnt a clue as to where the little tables and chairs came from (I never saw them in my friends homes or the local furniture store). I didnt know where the few Black kids who attended my school lived, and they were gone from my consciousness so quickly I would never have thought to ask. It was not that I was incapable of understanding; it was rather more like I was forbidden to know.</p>
<p>In other words, I learned nothing about power, agency, or history. The cult of content (not that there really was very much of it) ensured that we would have no opportunity to discover our own identity, or to validate our experience. I received my doses absolutely, dutifully, and on schedule, and moved on.</p>
<p>In the third, fourth, and fifth grades, and it didnt matter if we were Bluebirds or Robins, we learned, about the Holy Trinity Eskimos, Dead (white) Egyptians, and South and Central American Indians thus ensuring that we would never have anything of first- or secondhand experience to contribute to the conversation, or to make use of in helping us make sense of who we were ourselves. I have come to think of it as the educational equivalent of clearcutting. I learned quickly not to ask questions that went beyond proving what a good little Bluebird I had become. The line between education and concealment was very thin indeed. In this way we learned not to acknowledge each others presence, and to be passive consumers of whatever was dished out, and to act accordingly, isolated, independent, unattached, domesticated, waiting for our next knowledge fix. I was an A student.</p>
<p>Bluebirds were just as much objects of education as Robins, rather than subjects. We too learned that there was a single norm of thought and experience, and in some ways, it was equally not ours. The culture of silence enveloped us all, really a form of fatalism if we were able to think about it, though not thinking was well enforced, as the curtain of questions rained down upon us like arrows from the front of the room, deflecting any that might move in the opposite direction. I now, after 54 years of living upon this earth, recognize that so much of what was deposited in me was counterfeit currency. It is not surprising that when banks are filled with counterfeit currency, more often than not they go bankrupt.</p>
<p>If dialogue about race in our nation seems attenuated, we certainly dont have far to look to find out why.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>So now, I will leave many of those who complain about AA , you need to be reminded of the old spiritual because at some level it is everyone's song.</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>How, I got over , How, I got over
My sould looks back and wonders how I got over. <<</p>
<p>Race preferences in elite colleges is not justified by past injustices against afro-american slaves and its descendants from Jim Crow. It was justified by attaining "racial diversity" of the class which is of questionable benefit.</p>
<p>Check out this thread on Asian Americans.</p>
<p>Mini,
I appreciate your thoughtful post.</p>
<p>For anyone who is interested, here is a link to a Fairtest compilation of average 2004 SAT scores by race, income and gender. It is a PDF file requiring Acrobat Reader: <a href="http://www.fairtest.org/nattest/SAT%20Scoresn%202004%20Chart.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.fairtest.org/nattest/SAT%20Scoresn%202004%20Chart.pdf</a></p>
<p>You can do fun math with it: an 1100 SAT is simply a 1000 plus $50k.</p>
<p>A very fascinating discussion. I am biracial but was raised by my black mother. Some of my earliest memories are of marching on picket lines for school desegration. My siblings and I were always considered very smart at our very integrated public schools. Top grades and lots of honors, yet I scored 1000 on the SAT. It was the era of ivies recruiting blacks aggressively. Daily, I got letters inviting me to apply from schools I had never heard of. So what the heck, I applied! Thus me and my 1000 found ourselves at Harvard. Amazingly, I did very well on all levels when mixed with my silver spoon "peers". If AA is designed to change lives, I am the poster girl. There were fits and starts, but in 4 years I learned many lessons my mother couldn't teach me. A new work ethic, the possibilities, to think big. Yale law school followed. A marriage and divorce from one of my silver spoon peers. So my children are mixed race. They have grown up affluent and attended the best private schools, camps and programs. Certainly they have endured prejudice because of the color of their skin. Certainly they relate to the trials of their ancestors. And certainly they have had every advantage. I guess my question is, how many generations need to pass before AA based on race makes sense any longer? What is the responsibility of our people to assimilate the values that Asians and other immigrants seem to have adopted in far fewer generations? I hear Chinaman and live in California where I have seen Asians pass us by. Why are we lagging?</p>
<p>Kirmum,
I think that we may have been Harvard students around the same time. I was there when Lani was there, though she was ahead of me. Are you also on the Black Ivy listerv? </p>
<p>If you want to swap ideas and reminiscences, feel free to e-mail me.</p>
<p>I wish I were the right color to get into Harvard with a 1000.
Maybe my 1450 will do it...who knows</p>
<p>Good grief, BCgoUSC---if all you can write, after reading all the posts in this thread, is yet another stale and bitter rant against AA, then maybe your 1450 SAT score is an exaggerated reflection of your true intelligence!</p>