So, I’m just some white dude from lower middle class roots, so I don’t come into play here.
My wife is American Indian. I feel the need to further explain that she is Indian both biologically (full blood) and culturally (we just got back from her tribe’s annual pow wow, and she grew up on the rez).
My wife was certainly aided by AA. Her SATs were about 150 points lower than mine, and I probably wouldn’t have been considered for the university that we met at with her scores. This is not to say that I’m smarter than her; had I grown up where she grew up, I would have been lucky to have been sober on the day of the SATs. No one from her graduating class went to college, and only about half of the incoming freshmen ever get as much as a GED. The fact that she scored as high as she did proves that she is considerably better college material than I was. Giving her a leg up on guys like me makes sense.
Fast forward a generation. We have both been successful. Our careers have put us in a position to begin to live a comfortably upper middle class lifestyle. Our as yet nonexistant children will have both of our educations backing them up. Further, we can afford to send them to a good school and if necessary pay for tutors. In other words, they will likely be in better shape than I was.
Now, our children will likely be culturally more toward Indian than my own culture, for which I feel no major affinity. I have no problem if my children identify as Indian.
That being said, should they identify as Indian on college applications? Should they get preferential treatment? If not, does that mean that we should rethink AA and how it is applied? Should it be more toward socioeconomics? Should that only exclude upper class under represented minorities or does that mean that lower class whites should get preference as well?
Yes, your children should have Affirmative Action, because there is a stigma attached to being a Native American in this country, at this time.
Your children will be representatives of the possibility of a stable, intelligent, prosperous Native American family, a thing that many white Americans see as next to impossible.
Plus, on a totally craven point, it’ll save you a butt-load of money, most likely.
A very thoughfull OP, Fivey. Personally, I think AA should be geared towards socio-economic status, but that’s not the way it is. Your children are Indian (as much as mmany or most people who claim to be), and if they identify as Indian, there is no reason they shouldn’t avail themselves of the current law. They may choose not to, preferring to reserve the limitted amount of AA help available for those less fortunate than themselves, but that’s a person ethical choice for them alone to make. If the law were defined to help only those disadvantaged by reservation life it would have been written to do so. In the recent SCOTUS AA case it was clearly stated that one purpose of AA was to provide a culturally diverse student body, and your children will be able to help fulfill that purpose.
I don’t think you personaly should have any qualms about your kids and AA, especially of the self identify as Indians. On the other hand, I think AA is too broad a brush. I grew up a poor white kid in Massachusetts and was pissed that Sen. Brooke’s (an African American Senator) kids would get preference over me. They had many advantages that I didn’t (imagine me as one of those those kids in Good Will Hunting). I knew of a Spanish-surnamed kid that got preferential admission to Harvard even though he didn’t even speak Spanish.
Not sure what the answer is, but maybe more objective criteria such whether your parents went to college, family income, etc. BTW, congratulations to your wife for getting off the res and to you for landing her.
No, your children don’t “deserve” AA assistance. But that is not relevant.
However there may be reasons you choose to not seek AA assistance:
If you have strong philisophical oppostion with how AA is currently administered, it would by hypocritical to accept AA assitance. You may choose to not accept it based on principle.
You may feel that you have acheived a measure of financial success and may find on ethical grounds that you do not wish the taxpayer (that would be me) to finance your kid’s education. This is an altruistic view point, and a valid reason to reject AA assitance.
You may wish to send the message to your young adult that his/her ethnicity is not a handicap that needs a remedy. If you feel that way, you may reject not only AA assistance but lower admission standards via lower SAT scores, admissions racial set asides etc. Your child has advantages that your wife did not, (thanks to you and your wife’s hard work) and it may be a badge of honor to your child that he/she succeeded without assistance he/she did not need or want.
IMHO, your ethical sensibilities and sense of civic resonsibilty should be seriously considered. But your primary responsibility is to your child. It is not your fault that this well intentioned provision is poorly executed; use it if you need to.
I would add that the end game of AA is where you are/ what you have achieved. Your family situation is what AA was to achieve; namely a family that no longer needed an advantage to gain entry into college (the work force etc…), or race based financial help. AA was not to be a permanent fixture where generation after generation was helped this way.
Gaines suggested your kid would be a representative of a successful Native American, but I submit your wife (and successful family unit) is already this representative.
Is AA still needed in your particular situation? Probably no. But the program is not means tested, and that’s not your fault.
I didn’t intend this OP to include such things as financial support toward education. Merely preference for admission.
Admittedly, I have not yet considered the issue of whether they should apply for grants geared toward Indians. Those are mostly privately funded, and yet if my kid (again, I don’t yet have kids!) got one, another Indian kid who needed it likely would not.
First, should under represented minorities who have had life advantages, such as my nonexistant children, get preferential treatment in the first place? To that, 90% of me says no. The remaining 10% sees the rez, and wonders if it would do some good to get a few more Indians (or fill in another minority) into as high level positions as possible. At least for a generation or three.
Second, is the individual who takes advantage of such a situation wrong? For the most part, I would say no to this. If the proverbial black kid from Beverly Hills works the system to his advantage, I can’t fault him for it. Even if I have qualms about it for my own family, I don’t fault the individuals who decide to use whatever they can any more than I fault the kid who takes the SAT prep course.
If you want to admit me on a racial set aside to increase diversity, count me in, as long as you didn’t have to lower academic standards in the process.
I think there is a compelling reason for a college to encourage diversity. But if the method to get there means that my kid can score 200 points lower than his/her white counterparts, than I say “no.” My kids gets into your college on the merits, not because he/she is black/indian etc.
IOW, I would have no problem if my 1300 kid bumps another 1300 [white] kid in the name of diversity. But I surely wouldn’t want my 1000 kid to bump a 1300 kid in the name of diversity.
I didn’t say that this was the exclusive goal of AA, and diversity is a laudible goal. (btw I am a supporter of both AA and diversity)
But…as a parent I might object to my othwerwise capable child getting an unfair advantage in admissions if his/her academic record means a more qualified [white] student will get bumped.
All things being equal, I think that racial qoutas are fine. But I am encouraging my child to compete as if the field is level, and to compete on the merits, not to count on their ethnicity to compensate for their academic failings.
I don’t know fiveyearlurker’s financial situation, but I was in a similar situation a few years back. I was the star of my high school (1600 SAT, great grades, etc) which was in a pretty poor county (economically, that is). I could have won gobs of scholarships that were offered to students at my high school, but my family was pretty upper-middle class, so I decided to leave the scholarships for others who needed them more. But then my family’s financial situation bottomed out, and it was “Goodbye Ivy League, hello University of Louisville.” Those scholarships that I could have won would have allowed me to go to a much, much better school. But I did the noble thing, and I’m stuck at a school I hate surrounded by students who are, to put it bluntly, far stupider than I am. I know how elitist that sounds, but it’s true.
I think my position is very similar to yours, but think of this way: I am philosophically opposed to the idea that mortgage interest should be tax deductible. Further, I can well afford to not take advantage of that deduction myself. Yet I do, and have no qualms about it. Should I?
But your kid is not coming off the reservation is he? Is the goal to have more Indians in high positions for the sake of being Indian, or to improve the conditions on the reservation? Because I can see the argument for letting the kid off the reservation in, but if it is a means based method your kid should get no help, unless it is based on diversity.
Still, I have known quite a few affluent kids who were of other ethnicities. Other than their skin color, most of them had more in common with their white suburban counterparts than their ‘cultures of origin.’
It is a personal ethical decision for each person to decide as to whether it is OK to take advantage of AA provisions. But I disagree with your example. A parent who sends his/her kid to a SAT prep course does so at their own expense, and does not come at the expense of another person. AA does come at the expense of another person, whether the taxpayer or a student who gets bumped in the admissions process.
Nobody “deserves” affirmative action. Should they take advantage of it? Maybe. Hopefully by then and with your situation they won’t need it, but their classmates/coworkers may still benefit from having them around. In the US I wouldn’t be elective for AA, not being a citizen, but while working there I’ve been in quite a few situations where my being “a different point” helped put a perspective on some things (like that time a guy wanted to bomb “any country that’s ever had terrorists living in it” - gee, ain’t them Good Ol’ Boys bad enough, now we have to deal with you too?)
I have been several times in the position of being rejected for a job for being a woman (“but, how are we going to get a woman into Production?” through the door, sweet’ums, same as the guys). When I was finishing college, that notion was completely alien to me; I had had some gender-based discrimination but it was pretty mild and localized, so I thought it had pretty much dissapeared. After 10+ years of it, I sure don’t bat an eyelash when I get to a new job and someone says “oh, good, we need more womenfolk around here”.
If you consider the SATs a test of how prepared one will be for college, then I’m not sure that the final score is the best judge of that. All things are not equal. Like I mentioned in my wife’s case, her scores are nearly 200 points lower than mine. But, where she comes from, she had to take it upon herself to find out that she needed to take the SATs in the first place. Sounds silly, but no one else in her school took them because no one planned on going to college. She had to travel almost 100 miles to take them. She prepared herself with a well worn SAT book.
Meanwhile I had been prepped for the exam for years. Her score is lower, but much more impressive than mine.
So, I have no problem with such things being taken into consideration under the name of AA. I don’t see it as letting a less qualified minority in, but letting a more qualified minority with lower scores in. At least if used properly, which admittedly it often isn’t. I just struggle with whether being a minority should have anything to do with it. If it were adjusted for socioeconomics rather than race, it would still largely be helping minorities but it would seem much more equitable. In my wife’s example above, her race didn’t come into play, just her socioeconomic status.
But, the issue of helping a race’s socioeconomic status by giving them some hope is laudable. Reservations are often as depressing as ghettos. Very few escape. When we went to the pow wow over the weekend, her cousins (hundreds of them) were all impressed with what she had done. Maybe a few of them will try to follow her. So, the 10% of me that believes that my kids should be get a bit of a lift from their race comes from this aspect; they may get a little help that they don’t deserve, but it might serve a greater good. I’m not going to be so brash as to tell the deserving white kid who loses his spot that this is “fair” on the individual level, but if you pan out to the society level, I’m not sure anymore. Maybe it is fair. Now, how many generations you should do this for becomes another issue.
Like I said, I really am asking this question because I’m struggling with it. I don’t have all the answers.
I think it depends on what you see as the purpose of Affirmative Action.
Is it to promote diversity and help bring about a society in which the racial/ethnic makeup of colleges and careers reflects that of society as a whole?
Is it to make up for the presumed disadvantages that an individual faces as a member of a particular race/ethnicity?
Is it to counteract hidden racism or discrimination, to ensure that it isn’t preventing certain racial/ethnic groups from getting into college?
Is it a sort of payback or atonement for society’s racial/ethnic discrimination in years past?
For some of these, the answer to your question would be, “Sure, go ahead and take advantage of the AA”; for others, it wuold be, “Not unless you think your particular situation warrants it.”
I’ll add, at the risk of stating the obvious, that admitting a student to a school at which the student has either insufficient talent or insufficient preparation to stay afloat academically isn’t doing anyone any favors. Which is one of the potential dangers with AA.
These are theoretical children we’re trying to arrive at concrete answers for, yes? I’d say you should find out who your children are, how talented and hard-working they are, and make your decision then, based on who they are as people and students.
Say you have a spectacularly bright kid for whom school comes easy. I’d probably say such a child should not check the “American Indian” box on the application. It’s not like she needs the help to get into a decent school, and she would indeed be taking a slot away from one of your reservation cousins.
If you have a not-so-bright kid who really struggles academically, but tries and tries hard, then I’d see where a boost into a better school could be beneficial, and I’d overlook your financial position in favor of greater diversity, giving your kid better teachers and academic support so she can grow up to be in inspiration to other Indians, etc.
If you have a total slacker who doesn’t give a shit about school, I’d be personally pissed if she got into school by checking that box - again, because that slot ought to go to someone like your wife.
So I think it depends not only on your financial and social position, but what kind of kids you’re dealing with, and you just won’t know for years yet.