<p>Based on this data it seems like the preference for recruited atletes (less than 100 points on average) is smaller than that for URM's (about 200 points) but it can, on occasion, be bigger. That would be consistent with what I would have expected.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Based on this data it seems like the preference for recruited atletes (less than 100 points on average) is smaller than that for URM's (about 200 points) but it can, on occasion, be bigger. That would be consistent with what I would have expected.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I just read the review, so I would like to know how did you draw this conclusion(athlete preference less than 100 points vs. URm preference, 200 points) based on the data presented in the article (especially since it says nothing about URMs )?</p>
<p>more indepth book review</p>
<p>On the admissions advantage to recruited athletes, I would also recommend Bowen and Levin's "Reclaiming the Game: College Sports and Educational Values." (Maybe instead of "The Game of Life" if you're only going to read one.) </p>
<p>In many ways it's an updating of "The Game of Life." It has extensive data on the Ivies and NESCAC, has data on more recent classes than "The Game," reports extensively on the use of early admission by recruited athletes, and most important--is able to distinguish recruited athletes from the pool of all athletes. </p>
<p>They report the data in many forms, but maybe the most telling is when they break the admit rates out by SAT bands. Just to give a single example: for the 1999 applicant pool, in the 1300-1390 SAT band, the overall admit rate to the Ivies for non-recruited male athletes was 10%; for recruited athletes, over 60%. Women generally get an evern larger admissions advantage than men. </p>
<p>Bowen of course is also one of the authors, with Derek Bok, of "The Shape of the River," one of the most influential studies of preferential admissions in higher ed.; the book strongly endorses of the social advantages of AA in admissions, but presents a fairly balanced picture of the nature and extent of preferences.</p>
<p>since you have read "The Shape of the River", you may want to read the 90 page report by Russell Nieli of Princeton called,"The Changing Shape of the River"</p>
<p>Sybbie,</p>
<p>The athletic number is a rough interpollation form Ad officer's post #336, the URM number is an often cited number from this thread that does not seem to be disputed.</p>
<p>I just want to thank Shelby Steele for his idiotic comments about how AA is supposedly driven by white guilt. Apparently (whoops!) he didn't interview me, nor did Mr. Nieli. </p>
<p>No guilt. Not my reason for favoring some form of AA, as one not-dominant aspect of college admissions. And I'm certainly not interested in giving a big boost to any student for some skin color reason alone if that student has not pulled his or her weight prior to the application. I don't think skin color of any kind entitles anyone (for that reason) to admission at an elite. Same for Latinos, by the way. </p>
<p>I've worked most of my adult life in education, and felt a moral commitment to it from early childhood, as well as a strong desire for it. I advocate for opportunity in general for all my students; some of them have been minority, some not. The key for me is not their minority status; the key for me is whether I see that yearning, and in what way I can be an instrument in encouraging & filling that yearning. When an elite college sees this, I find it perfectly logical and non-emotional that they also would want to capitalize on such motivation & internal commitment by a student. This is called merit.</p>
<p>I also love the way that campus political protests by minority groups ("black student demands") were conflated with ADMISSIONS POLICIES. Never mind that not all admissions offices were responding to student protests when they created those policies. </p>
<p>The only section I agree with (in part) is the commentary about subordination of black entitlement and status within the white structure that 'provides' that, and how that does not promote the black or white perception of an equally legitimate people/culture not needing 'permission' if you will. However, I don't think the solution to that is to refuse to award seats to students who wish to mingle with & take advantage of the power structure. Why not? I don't see it as race issue per se - perhaps because I work with so many races & because for me the key elements are motivation & opportunity.</p>
<p>
[quote]
That the center is located in a black neighborhood does not disqualify its openness to students without regard to their race. The center does not exclude the 20% non-black residents of the area.
[/quote]
Then it is nothing more than a public library, a facility that would be destroyed in the courts once someone sued for equal access to already limited resources to be spent for centers in non-black communities. There is nothing affirmative here that can help blacks.</p>
<p>
[quote]
In order to convince me that you dont support what you deem as racial preference programs, I request that you affirm support for Mr. Connerlys civil rights initiatives. If you can honestly write, I am for his initiatives, then Ill believe you.
[/quote]
Since I have seen you switch from one</a> flawed justification to the next in search of a means to publicly maintain a position to which you were obviously committed from the beginning, I do not think it wise to attempt to convince you of anything.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Otherwise, as the Espenshade and Chung study showed, there are serious preferences for one race over another.
[/quote]
That is not what E & C demonstrates. It demonstrates the effective selection pressure on blacks in only a few schools where blacks were virtually shut out in the first place. There are no scapegoats here for you at least not any that are black.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I believe that in light of this history, the role of race in our society should be minimized as much as possible. I am not interested in dividing people by race.
[/quote]
Look around. You dont have to be interested in this because you already have it. They already are divided by race due to effects created by unfairness against blacks, effects which you now wish to simply ignore from here onward. Your solutions would not improve matters, precisely as they have failed to improve them in California where entire schools are moving toward being Asian and white and black. Because of the past, and as evidenced by public schools nearly everywhere, we know exactly to which schools the bulk of our scarce resources would eventually go. You offer nothing to help blacks here. Your desire now is precisely the same as it always has been, to gain fairness for certain non-blacks by overlooking the wholesale unfairness done to specifically to blacks for as long as there have been blacks in America. It is quite clear to me you will take even the most ridiculous positions to maintain this desire.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You did not answer my question regarding Michigans pre-2003 undergraduate admissions system. They did treat race as one of many factors in determining admissions. Yet, they also gave twenty automatic points to any member of an under-represented group. Are you suggesting that it was not preferential treatment?
[/quote]
I cant very effectively judge the old system because I do not know how it worked, and just how discriminatory it ended up being in practice. It could be that the school simply assigned some additional hard value to GPA, to the SAT, or to some other fixed quantity due purely to race. While I think such a system is preferable to your approach, which is to do absolutely nothing with regard to race, a better system would be to flag minority applications for closer review, and judge them on a case-by-case basis, in view of all the forces that influenced the application, including race.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Do you disagree with the definition set forth by Gerald Hill and Kathleen Hill? If so, then please inform me. Your non-too-subtle sarcasm did not provide an answer to my question. Is special rights the same as preferential treatment?
[/quote]
I do not see how applying a consideration for the effects of race to a college application amounts to special rights when the consideration is given because of special wrongs. The definition is infused with bias. A better definition is found [url= <a href="http://dictionary.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/results.pl?co=dictionary.lp.findlaw.com&topic=b0/b05b86fa7a6ddaf03bfee662dc74bed6%5Dhere%5B/url">http://dictionary.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/results.pl?co=dictionary.lp.findlaw.com&topic=b0/b05b86fa7a6ddaf03bfee662dc74bed6]here[/url</a>].</p>
<p>
[quote]
Thank you for the clarification on your viewpoint toward Executive Order 10925. I just go one step further and say what applied there without regard - should also apply for college admissions.
[/quote]
But you are not authoritative, and neither is Kennedy in this context. Employing an executive order to support your point in this discussion is less than worthless. It is worthy of ridicule, as is your use of the number of hits from one, narrow-minded Google search to prove the general importance of an issue concerning race.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You say that you dont want race controlling anything so that one race is generally preferred over another. Like I wrote in paragraph two, for me to believe you, Id have to read that you support Mr. Connerlys civil rights initiatives.
[/quote]
Connerly intentionally avoids the truth of the past just as you do. So requiring that I also avoid the truth before you believe me only demonstrates how committed you are to unbelief in the first place. I do not think he is motivated by selfishness, but ultimately has a desire to help blacks. I support his ultimate goal, but I do not support his lack of awareness. I also do not think you share his motivation and ultimate wishes; and therefore I have never awakened with your belief in me on my list of priorities.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Even though I cant control my race, I did not get stiffed from racial preferences. As I have mentioned several times on this thread, I had a 100% acceptance rate in my applications. I dislike how you insinuate that I am against racial preferences because I was harmed by them. I was not harmed, but I am still against the policy. Why? Because I dont believe in discrimination against, and I dont believe in discrimination for. We differ only on the last part.
[/quote]
No, our differences are far more fundamental than this. I think your passion here is much less noble than you imply, your selfishness much broader than you claim. The country officially and deliberately forced blacks into a place where now vast numbers of us lack faith in Americas possibilities. We just dont believe in the place as others do, and even those relative few of us who did believe were crushed when we acted on that belief. We never were supposed to believe. The law even forbade it. And now the destruction is everywhere. No one who so vigorously disregards this official centuries-long destruction of faith as you do can possibly have in his mind a desire for the essential well-being of his countrymen, for all of them. Our differences are much greater than you will ever be willing to admit here.</p>
<p>"Apparently (whoops!) he didn't interview me, nor did Mr. Nieli."</p>
<p>Nieli's report is not based on interviews. It is data driven.</p>
<p>I don't care that "it's based on data." The report quotes extensively from Steele, and <em>those</em> quotes are broad generalizations based on hot air -- emphasis, air.</p>
<p>I was giving a reason of why he did not interview YOU.</p>
<p>Drosselmeier,</p>
<p>On the one hand, you don’t want a guarantee of exclusive aid to blacks, which you mentioned in post 328. On the other hand, you claim that a tutoring center located in a predominantly (c.f. exclusively) black community that offers services to the public free-of-charge without regard to race isn’t “affirmative[ly]” helping the blacks in that area because it can also help the other 20% of the residents who are non-black.</p>
<p>Like I said, if you want guarantees, I acknowledge that I am not creative enough to find a way to help only blacks without resorting to racial preferences. Yet, as Dr. Douglas Massey showed, racial preferences have had the effect of helping black immigrants, who you believe don’t deserve any preferential treatment from our country by virtue of their sharing the same skin color as you.</p>
<p>That you refuse to proclaim your support for Mr. Connerly’s civil rights initiatives and instead claim “it [not] wise to attempt to convince [me] of anything” shows that you are for preferential treatment. You just don’t like the name.</p>
<p>I do not seek scapegoats. I have no need for a scapegoat. Even if I were rejected from some of the schools on my list, I would still be against racial preferences. I am against all types of discrimination, whether they be “positive” or “negative.”</p>
<p>I contest your evaluation that the solutions I support “have failed to improve [the situations] in California where entire schools are moving toward being ‘Asian’ and ‘white’ and ‘black.’” As you well know, after Proposition 209 at the flagship universities of the UC system, two out of every five students receives Pell Grants. It does not matter that “entire schools are moving toward being ‘Asian’ and ‘white’ and ‘black.’” It does greatly matter that the universities are now making the American dream available to many more students of all backgrounds.</p>
<p>As Justice Thomas wrote in Parents Involved, “Racial imbalance is not segregation.”</p>
<p>You say that “* offer nothing to help blacks [with the solutions I support].” I remind you that after 1996, UC-Riverside saw an increase in black admissions of 240%. “Nothing to help” blacks indeed.</p>
<p>The old Michigan formula did not “assign some additional hard value to GPA, to the SAT, or to some other fixed quantity due purely to race.” They gave the twenty points to “under-represented” students independent of all else (hence, automatic). You say that you’re against preferential treatment, but you’re for “flag[ing] minority applications for closer review” simply because they come from minority students. That is preferential treatment.</p>
<p>Your definition of affirmative action is indeed “[not] infused with bias.” However, it is too vague.</p>
<p>
[quote]
An active effort (as through legislation) to improve the employment or educational opportunities of members of minority groups or women
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Under this definition, I am very much for affirmative action. Mr. Connerly’s initiatives seek to improve the employment and educational opportunities of said Americans. Since I am for his initiatives, I am for this type of active effort (i.e. affirmative action).</p>
<p>As you can see, your definition does not give any examples of what constitutes an “active effort.” Connerly’s active efforts seek to remove preferential treatment as a legitimate method of positive discrimination. Your active efforts seek to maintain preferential treatment, whether it’s “flagging” a minority application for further review or giving a “substantial boost” to a white male student.</p>
<p>Our differences are indeed great. I believe in America. I believe in equal treatment. This is our country. I’m sorry that you feel alienated in your own home.</p>
<p>simba, Do you understand the phrase "figure of speech"? Mine was a figurative way of speaking. Steele's generalizations, which Nieli is in love with, are based on assumptions of motivations, which Steele is not in a position to know. </p>
<p>Universities which employ a modified form of AA in their admissions policies, which AdOfficer reminds us is not a large number of institutions, are doing so with practical intent, regardless of the legal and sociological principles which support that intent. (There are several intents, but the intents are current & future focused.)</p>
<p>
[quote]
On the one hand, you don’t want a guarantee of exclusive aid to blacks, which you mentioned in post 328. On the other hand, you claim that a tutoring center located in a predominantly (c.f. exclusively) black community that offers services to the public free-of-charge without regard to race isn’t “affirmative[ly]” helping the blacks in that area because it can also help the other 20% of the residents who are non-black.
[/quote]
That is quite false. I do not care that the other 20% is helped. That is great, in fact. My concern would be for the white neighborhood across town, where grades and test scores are already high, suing the state for centers in their neighborhoods and thereby destroying the help for blacks by taking already meager resources for themselves. This is what always happens when anything comes down pike designed to help blacks. There is nothing affirmative here.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Like I said, if you want guarantees, I acknowledge that I am not creative enough to find a way to help only blacks without resorting to racial preferences. Yet, as Dr. Douglas Massey showed, racial preferences have had the effect of helping black immigrants, who you believe don’t deserve any preferential treatment from our country by virtue of their sharing the same skin color as you.
[/quote]
Well, they don’t have cause for this assistance, since the country did nothing to them. They are here in an entrepreneurial venture, unlike blacks.</p>
<p>
[quote]
That you refuse to proclaim your support for Mr. Connerly’s civil rights initiatives and instead claim “it [not] wise to attempt to convince [me] of anything” shows that you are for preferential treatment. You just don’t like the name.
[/quote]
Nonsense. You require that I agree with you in order to prove I do not support preferring one race above another. It is pure nonsense. If in your hypothetical center whites wished to visit for services, I would be more than happy with it. Indeed, I would be ecstatic about it because I have a strong suspicion that when blacks see up-close how whites value the service, they will begin to understand the value too. My concern is with how typical it is that anything designed to help blacks is attacked and whittled away in the name of some high-minded ideal that few, if anyone, truly believes.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I contest your evaluation that the solutions I support “have failed to improve [the situations] in California where entire schools are moving toward being ‘Asian’ and ‘white’ and ‘black.’” As you well know, after Proposition 209 at the flagship universities of the UC system, two out of every five students receives Pell Grants. It does not matter that “entire schools are moving toward being ‘Asian’ and ‘white’ and ‘black.’”
[/quote]
It does matter.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You say that “* offer nothing to help blacks [with the solutions I support].” I remind you that after 1996, UC-Riverside saw an increase in black admissions of 240%. “Nothing to help” blacks indeed.
[/quote]
And the better schools, those on which you have your eye, saw an overwhelming drop in black admissions.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You say that you’re against preferential treatment, but you’re for “flag[ing] minority applications for closer review” simply because they come from minority students. That is preferential treatment.
[/quote]
Please. It is certainly no more "preferential" than building an entire tutoring center free of charge in an essentially black community. I am suggesting only a similar thing-- to do the same thing for blacks as is done for anyone else, but being sure to consider race, which is quite essentially what you have suggested in your “solution”.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Your definition of affirmative action is indeed “[not] infused with bias.” However, it is too vague.
[/quote]
It is the truth, without bias. It is only vague to you because it does not include the nonsense you wish to include.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Under this definition, I am very much for affirmative action. Mr. Connerly’s initiatives seek to improve the employment and educational opportunities of said Americans. Since I am for his initiatives, I am for this type of active effort (i.e. affirmative action).
[/quote]
Connerly does not seek to improve anything for anyone. Currently, his initiatives are concerned with one thing- destroying Affirmative Action. He willfully overlooks the truth to pursue this goal, quite like you do.</p>
<p>
[quote]
As you can see, your definition does not give any examples of what constitutes an “active effort.”
[/quote]
And neither does yours. The only “active effort” you have mentioned here has been to actively destroy affirmative action. It is typical of AA opponents. They harp against blacks and whine constantly about the very few blacks who are helped by Affirmative Action, but never push as much for solutions for the blacks they disingenuously claim they want to help.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Your active efforts seek to maintain preferential treatment, whether it’s “flagging” a minority application for further review or giving a “substantial boost” to a white male student.
[/quote]
Or an Asian, or a Hispanic, or anyone else depending on the overall case being evaluated. And this proves I do not prefer one race above another. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Our differences are indeed great. I believe in America. I believe in equal treatment. This is our country. I’m sorry that you feel alienated in your own home.
[/quote]
I feel alienated because so many, like you, believe in America, which from its very beginning has been patently unfair to people like me, and now wishes to intentionally overlook that unfairness – even blaming me for refusing to do likewise.</p>
<p><a href="curious14:">quote</a>
Based on this data it seems like the preference for recruited atletes (less than 100 points on average) is smaller than that for URM's (about 200 points) but it can, on occasion, be bigger. That would be consistent with what I would have expected.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't know what data you mean, but the SAT equivalents from Espenshade and Chung's model are as follows. Quoting from their second article:</p>
<p>+230 Black
+200 Recruited athlete
+185 Hispanic
+160 Legacy
- 50 Asian (note minus sign)</p>
<p>The data for athletes must be rather variable between sports. Hockey and football require large levels of preference for the varsity players to become admissible, while cross-country running and swimming may not need so much "help".</p>
<p>Hmmm.</p>
<p>I haven't really focused on this, but I am wondering what is the essential racial composition of these three groups:</p>
<p>+200 Recruited athlete
+185 Hispanic
+160 Legacy</p>
<p>If we are bascially talking about whites here, then my goodness!. Y'all are beating up on the wrong people indeed!</p>
<p>Has anyone seen a break out of the recruited athlete preference numbers by race. It may make Drosselmeier's point. Then again it might contradict it. Does anyone have the facts? I personally would love to see all of these preferences abandoned and agree with Drosselmeir that it would be wrong to eliminate racial preferences and keep the others especially if they are implicitly discriminatory against URM's.</p>
<p>^^me too, especially the legacy preference...</p>
<p>Well, the study was limited to elite schools, where blacks hardly exist even in sports. So, it seems to me all this beating up on blacks by throwing around E & C is just sad. Shoot, let's pull the effective boost down to 190 points, or even to 159. Blacks would take a hit initially, but it is not likely the hit will be so great that it would destroy us. If that is enough to cause people to stop beating us over the head as they especially enjoy doing, I think the benefit will more than outweigh the negatives.</p>
<p>Absent all the attacks, we would enter the campuses with greater confidence and do MUCH better, passing on culture just as I have always envisioned.</p>
<p>curious..."the game of life" does talk about race and how it may or may not overlap with athletics in the admissions process.</p>
<p>Someone who truly "believes in America," also believes, if this is an honest belief, in full opportunity in a more complex, activating, & realistic way than just simply, "Go do it." The ideal/idea of America is not a Nike slogan. That most definitely does not mean equality of result, which can never be guaranteed, and which, from all the policy statements, is not the intent behind AA. </p>
<p>The impoverished, urban African-American black student growing up in a single-parent household of an undereducated mother without outside support does not have equal opportunity to students from other kinds of family situations. This is esp. true of males, since they so often lack educated fathers as role models for this purpose. And if you think role models are not important in the desire for education, you lead a sheltered life. It is true of every class and race of student. My white students, my Hispanic students are also positively and negatively affected by the level of <em>dual</em>-parental involvement in their educations. I can track it, and have, quantitatively. Lower middle class students (all races) with both parents involved in their education are achieving at twice the rate as those with one parent involved.</p>
<p>I.m.o., Affirmative Action is only useful as it activates opportunity. To me, it is useless as a feel-good slogan, or as a way to make enrollment in an Elite more socially acceptable for the majority. While it is not true that a significant number of successful African Americans "return" to their roots to be role models in the community in any sustained way, I would be happy with mere attrition. When the lowest common denominators of life "in the 'hood" are no longer the operating dynamics with which black youth identify, then those anti-educational forces will be less & less effective in contributing to downward pressures. It is difficult for this to happen without enough people exiting the 'hood.</p>
<p>Yes, I know that I, too, am oversimplifying, in that there are internal factors (resulting from societal legacies that have been internalized, legacies that Drosselmeier has alluded to), and these factors contribute in a major way to the lack of interest in outside opportunity, the lack of impulse to strive, the adoption of a counter-culture at odds with educational & economic success. But the solution is not to abandon all race-aware programs "until" black urban communities "get their act together" (reform from the inside). The race-aware programs are not there for those who lack the motivation, but for those who display the determined behaviors that are essential to the success of those AA programs.</p>
<p>AA will NOT solve the problems in the black community (regarding educational achievement, economic transformation, upward class mobility). It is merely one end of the spectrum. It is insufficient by itself to achieve a less-unequal America. But it is at least an escape-route for those who do not wish to be defined & permanently limited by their origins. I'll take a modern version of an Underground Railway over nothin'. And I will call myself selfish in this regard. It doesn't benefit me, except in a cynical, ugly way, to live in a country with a large underclass. It CERTAINLY doesn't benefit me in terms of violent crime, housing values, and even local economy. But on a mere everyday human level, it impedes dialogue, everyday harmony, and political & economic collaboration. Where an underclass exists, distrust flourishes.</p>