<p>I don't see what's to be more speicfic than I've been. A perspective from 2 generations ago, mostly directed toward racial integration in k-12 schools (and other institutional integration) cannot be leapfrogged over into 2007 to make statements about a deceased civil rights leader's expectations & attitudes about private college admissions practices in this era. Anyone can quote anyone, but the applicability may not be relevant.</p>
<p>epiphany,</p>
<p>Why not cite the quote from King that you think is out of context and tell us why?</p>
<p>I'm talking about his entire lifting of his life & legacy regarding a much earlier CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT to today's college admissions scene. Two different animals, two different eras. You are new to CC, curious14. (Feb, 2007). Do a search on fabrizio using the search tools, and you will find post after post with MLK quotes in them, dating back over a year on various threads on PF, College Admissions, and other fora here. I'm not going to do this homework for you. He's simply using the HISTORICAL FIGURE (referring to the man and his body of work, speeches) out of context.</p>
<p>Epiphany.</p>
<p>You have used the technique of claiming that a large number of posts makes you and expert before (a rather dubious distinction). Since, you made the charge that Fabrizio is taking things out of context I think you bear the responsibility to back up your point with as little as a single example, rather than all of this condescending hand waving.</p>
<p>Drosselmeier,</p>
<p>You talk of “bogus racial imagery that…condemn[s] blacks.” However, 300 did not condemn blacks. It condemned imaginary dark-skinned Persians. Unless you want to define “dark-skin = black,” the groups are distinct.</p>
<p>I respect your point that certain lies “encourage whites” and “apply downward pressures to blacks.” I’m simply asking for you to either recognize that Semites and Persians have a right to label themselves as blacks or discontinue the use of “White Jesus.” Jesus was Semitic, therefore he was white. He wasn’t light-skinned, but his being dark-skinned did not make him black. Again, if you want to define “dark-skin = black,” I could be considered black under your definition.</p>
<p>Ah, I see you misinterpreted my post. I apologize for not being clear enough. When I wrote, “You seem to suggest that there is a dearth of black heroes in America,” I used dearth to indicate an inadequate supply. I did not use it to mean a lack of.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Still, it is not as if his [Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.] dream is now realized, and we ought not let the man's greatness ever distract us from this truth as you've tried to distract us here.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I never said it was. In addition, I have neither tried to “distract” you nor have I tried to dupe you into thinking that it was. My desire to see a race-blind America where citizens are judged based on character instead of skin color follows his dream. It does not detour from it.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I went back over the thread looking for historically "out of context" quotes from Fabrizio and I find nothing that could be even remotely considered in this catagory. Could you be specific?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>She refers to how this kid tries to exploit King's name to destroy King's beliefs.</p>
<p>Fabrizio does it [url=<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=3541297&postcount=107%5Dhere%5B/url">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=3541297&postcount=107]here[/url</a>] * for example: "Strange ideal? OK, I guess Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s belief that we should judge by character and not skin color has really faded into the background amidst rallying cries of "diversity" and "inclusion." Which is sad, really."*
It is an intellectually dishonest approach to take a man's ideals and then use them to wage war on his belief on how those ideals should be realized, all the while acting as if you hold the man in high honor. It would be more honorable to simply argue that King was right in his ideals but wrong in his views about realizing them, and that those who think as King did are likewise wrong. King had his dream about being judged only by character. I share this ideal. King also supported Affirmative Action, and so do I. When anti-AA folks employ King's dream as they often do, they attempt to put the great weight of King’s name behind beliefs that he did not share. They use King the Dreamer to wage war against King’s belief in AA, as if King had an understanding that his Dream was anti-AA. Basically, they corrupt history, often intentionally, sometimes from pure ignorance. Whatever the case, it reveals more about them than it does about anyone else.</p>
<p>In this thread, invoking King has amounted to nothing more than cheap sanctimony, designed to gain emotional support from readers here as I am portrayed as being at odds with the great MLK. It is quite obviously cheap, childish, and I think unworthy of further discussion. I would not have posted here on the matter had Epiph not done so. Since she mentioned how I might be offended by this approach, I thought I would take the time to let her and the rest of the thread know I am not offended at all. I see the truth of it, how those who employ this approach debase themselves while appearing honorable to people who are not as perceptive as epiphany and those like her.</p>
<p>epiphany,</p>
<p>I feel the need to defend my name.</p>
<p>Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was for racial preferences, quotas, and reparations. He said so, and he was frank about it. I disagree with him on these positions, but I respect his candor. By contrast, many people today verbally state racial preferences don’t exist but are adamantly opposed to measures that ban racial preference. They state quotas don’t exist but seem to forget that a “goal” is naught more than a quota by another name. They’ve abandoned the social justice aspect of affirmative action in favor of “diversity” and other feel-good sugar-coated words.</p>
<p>Dr. King was also for a world where we could be evaluated based on our merit, YES – OUR MERIT, not our melanin levels. I share his dream, though I do not share the path he proposed to reach this dream. Our ends are the same, but our means are different. That this is true does not give me less of a right to quote from Dr. King.</p>
<p>You say I’m “throw[ing] out quotes in what can be a historically irrelevant way.”</p>
<p>I don’t think citing from Chief Justice Earl Warren’s opinions in the Brown cases or the text of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is historically irrelevant, particularly since it has been less than a month since Meredith and Parents Involved were ruled. Brown has not been overturned. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 has not been made obsolete. Quoting from these sources is not historically irrelevant. Rather, it is highly relevant to any discussion about racial preferences.</p>
<p>Curious,
I have never, ever said or implied that a particular volume of posts by anyone(including myself) signifies "expertise." That is a misrepesentation of my statements. Stop distorting the record.</p>
<p>"Defend your name" to Drosselmeier, fabrizio. I maintain that not only in your previous posts, on this and other threads, do you not understand the concept of applicability, in this last post you similarly demonstrate this.</p>
<p>Drosselmeier,</p>
<p>Very nice job of taking things out of context.</p>
<p>Again, I must defend my name, as is my right to do so.</p>
<p>In post 99 of that thread, Just_Browsing asked me, “So then you support the use of race in assigning people to schools in K-12 education?”</p>
<p>I responded in post 101, “Good god no! I hope the Supreme Court will definitively rule against this.” (Side note: my hope was realized as the Roberts Court ruled against the use of race in Meredith and Parents Involved.)</p>
<p>He then wrote in post 102, “So you think its not too late to save 5 year olds.... but don't want to because of some strange ideal you have. Hmm, ok.”</p>
<p>In post 107, I responded as follows:</p>
<p>
[quote]
Strange ideal? OK, I guess Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s belief that we should judge by character and not skin color has really faded into the background amidst rallying cries of "diversity" and "inclusion." Which is sad, really.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Thus, not only did I maintain adequate context, I was also writing from a legally correct point of view as the 1964 Civil Rights Act described desegregation to “mean the assignment of students to public schools and within such schools WITHOUT REGARD to their race, color, religion, or national origin.”</p>
<p>Drosselmeier,</p>
<p>Judging people "by the content of their character and not the color of their skins" works as rhetoric because it has universal appeal. If it is true as you say, and I have no reason to doubt you, that King supported “affirmative action” as now practiced, i.e. racial preferences, King has lost some of his credibility with me. Fabrizio is not the one to be faulted here but King for using rhetoric designed to appeal across the racial divide while quietly seeking preferences based on race.</p>
<p>Epiphany,</p>
<p>The only claiim that anyone has to expertise on these forums is the content of their argument. I'll leave it to others to interpret what is implied by your earlier posts.</p>
<p>Fab:</p>
<p>You have failed to make your case, but in fact have simply amplified further how you've abused King and American history.</p>
<p>You also set King against King here, abusing the man's name and ideals to support your own position-- which he did not share. Much of what you say is true, but you still employ King to lobby against what King believed.</p>
<p>You do it here</a> too.</p>
<p>You in fact have consistently turned King's famous statement into a cheap slogan against AA, employing King's considerable name and reputation to uphold a thing King would have rejected, acting all along as if you are King's ally. You know King does not support you, yet you continually associate your anti-King ideals with his. It is plainly dishonorable, son.</p>
<p>Okay. I know how these things go, and have therefore been trying to get out of it even several posts ago. You see the truth. I know it, and so does everyone else. That is pretty much all I am interested in here. I'll let you go on and "win", which is what's really important to you.</p>
<p>Drosselmeier,</p>
<p>You're the one who has successfully knocked King down a peg. King's defense of affirmative action no more validates racial preferences than Churchill's or Roosevelt's racism validated racism.</p>
<p>There is another point-of-view that people have forgotten. It is possible that discrimination was so bad in the 60's (during King's time) that an extreme measure like AA would be necessary, whereas it <em>might</em> not be today (not saying it is or it isn't). In science they might call it a regime of discrimination. </p>
<p>Also, I think it's also worth noting that many people who oppose racial AA support socioeconomic AA because no one can argue against income's effect on a student's performance. Defending racial AA all comes down to one key question or assumption: does the level of discrimination in schools today affect a student's performance (aside from discrimination that may have reduced their parents' income), and if so, how much? Also, people will disagree on whether society should attempt to account for self-defeating attitudes that URM cultures may have adopted as a result of past discrimination. (For example, society held URMs back in the past, and even though it arguably may not be actively holding URMs back, expectations of low performance developed during the past may be holding back URMs today.)</p>
<p>It's also worth noting that development admits and legacies are also completely unjustifiable.</p>
<p>I think with such a polarized subject as AA, I think it's best to explicitly state what assumptions one's arguments are based on.</p>
<p>Drosselmeier,</p>
<p>In post 147, I wrote “I share his dream, though I do not share the path he proposed to reach this dream. Our ends are the same, but our means are different. That this is true does not give me less of a right to quote from Dr. King” (emphasis added).</p>
<p>Thus, I clearly acknowledge that Dr. King “does not support [my divergence on certain issues].” For you to ignore this and claim that I have “failed to make [my] case” is an accident at best and disingenuous at worst.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You in fact have consistently turned King's famous statement into a cheap slogan against AA…
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I have consistently used this phrase in proper context. It is not a cheap slogan at all. It is a goal that I would like to see realized. Kindly spare me your ostentatious piety and righteousness. I favor a world where I see a man for who he is as opposed to a “diversity” representative of a culture, ethnicity, or race. By contrast, you favor maintaining an emphasis on race, demonstrated by your refusal to acknowledge that “White Jesus” is redundant as well as your desire to categorize everything by race.</p>
<p>I indeed see the truth. “Winning” isn’t important to me. Responding to false allegations is, however.</p>
<p>To get on topic, as a compromise, I’d trade the end of the SAT for the end of racial preferences. It would make college admissions far more subjective than it already is, but if it helps remove racial preferences, I’m for it.</p>
<p>Collegealum,</p>
<p>Some good thoughts. I especially liked the one about King's time vs. now. It turns Ephipahy's argument on its head. Perhaps it is Epiphany and Drosselmeier who are taking arguments out of their historical context.</p>
<p>fabrizio,</p>
<p>I mentioned this earlier (post 135 I think). </p>
<p>I think that one assumption that the authors make that would not actually occur is that if schools abandoned or deemphasized SAT's they would go to something like the 10% plans. These plans assume that all GPA's or rather class ranks are of equal value as a measure of ability. It's hard to imagine a more obviously false assumption. My guess is that if schools moved away from standardized tests they would attempt to weight GPA's and class ranks by the difficulty of the HS and the curriculum within the HS. This would be very hard to do and as a result I don't think we will see a mass abandonment of standardized testing (which, in part, serves this purpose now). But in such a world, it is not clear that minority acceptances, absent preferences, would be any better. Is anyone aware of any studies that have attempted to compare class ranks, race and SAT scores within a single HS with a common curriculum for all students? It would take such a study to answer this question. Not exactly on point but relevant to this issue is the Bowen and Bok study, College Board, 1998, which pointed out that the SAT I actually over predicts college academic performance for minority students.</p>
<p>Somehow I doubt the pro-racial preference forces would accept a merit based system that simply excluded standardized testing. Their problem is not with standardized testing but with any system that does not result in a racially "balanced" outcome. As the Bowen & Bok study suggests eliminating standardized testing won't accomplish that.</p>
<p>We are in the age of "newspeak" to them "merit" means racially balanced.</p>
<p>If a dream is ever to become a reality at some point you have to start living as if it were a reality.</p>
<p>Nobody is going to change their mind on this one and no law nor court decision will keep admissions departments from practicing whatever type of discrimination they want. Right now today it is in all the better schools a preference for URM's. Fifty years ago it was a preference against them. Who knows who the favored or disfavored group will be in anoth 50 years? In their hubris the folks running our elite schools think they shape our society when in fact all they do is reflect it - both the good and the bad.</p>
<p>"The only claiim that anyone has to expertise on these forums is the content of their argument."</p>
<p>^^ which is all I also have ever claimed. </p>
<p>My interest is in debating the issues on their merit, not in picking & choosing quotes in a misapplied & misdirected fashion. I debate on the merits of the argument when on a thread, that argument -- not a different argument.</p>