<p>"You are the one not taking everything into context."
Maybe I'm not. Probably not, actually...I don't know too much about that specific subject. However, I'm fairly sure that Harvard, at least, is less affirmative-action than other schools...I'm white and very poor (far below the poverty line) and went to a crappy rural high school, so I count as a "disadvantaged white student"...I don't know...my perception of Harvard is that it accepts students based on how well they will do there, regardless of race etc. I don't see Harvard doing what you said here: "The problem is when some black or Hispanic student who has been given all the same economic and educational opportunities as an advantaged white applicant uses his race to make up for his lack of intelligence and talent and thus undermines the intellectual community of the college, adding nothing but color." No one I've met, at least, has been like that; they are all truly "Harvard material".
"College should, for these reasons, allocate affirmative action on a socioeconomic basis. They, however, cannot do this because the decisively inferior stats of blacks and Hispanics would leave the campuses colorless." I'm a little confused...do you mean the SAT stats of comparable socioeconomic groups? I think they take those things into consideration...
Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. Thoughts?
~lb</p>