Horowitz has a web-site called Front Page Magazine Horowitz has worked actively for civil rights since before Honesty was born. His differences of opinion are over means, not ends.
I agree that affirmative action impacts the groups listed, but I think it does them more harm than good. There was a time when AA was important, because Blacks were once automatically excluded from many areas, but that situation has been pretty well cured.
Although affirmative action has helped in many ways, it has two huge negatives:
[ul][li]It masks the terrible education being offered in too many inner city schools, and thus reduces the urgency to fix the problems [/li][li]It puts many minority students in colleges where they don’t belong and from which they don’t graduate. [/ul][/li]I am sincerely thankful that there was no such thing as affirmative action for Jews when I went to school.
Of course our favorite ahem, “conservative” poster willfully overlooks past discusssions on this very board pointing out the rather willfully unfactual nature of H boy’s arguments in the realm of race (I believe the reparations arguments in the fall?).
Given some problematic underlings I have had to deal with, and things I have seen coming up the ranks, I don’t think it is pretty well-cured at all.
The US arm of my employer still has to look out for certain paler skinned folks who just don’t seem to get the meaning of EOE.
But it is vastly better than only a decade ago when I started out in the business world.
In any event, I am sure that december is sincerely thankful there were was no “AA” for Jews (which meaning of AA?) as he sincerely believes that a “left-wing” press in England is responsible for Thatcher’s image there.
Collounsbury, was your pronoun “it” referring to the automatic exclusion of Blacks in many areas? (Hopefully you didn’t interpret my post as a claim that all aspects of racism were cured.) Can you give some examples of areas where Blacks are automatically excluded today?
You have it exactly backwards: both SAT scores and high school GPAoverpredict African-American and Hispanic freshman college grades (N.B.: African-American females’ combined scores are pretty much spot-on in predicting freshman grades).
So, by your standard, should we “take away” from those scores to account for this positive bias?
No, obviously she lost out to a black person. You and she “know” that.
This rather goes to my point on observational bias and a bit of seriously unexamined prejudices. Yes, KellyM, I do think --I as an Ivy educated WASP-- that a goodly number of objections in re AA are based on this. There are valid and reasonable objections, but far more of the discourse is tainted by thinly vieled and possibly unconscious racism. Pure and simple.
The article you cite does note that for certain minorities, the correlations are weaker than for the general population and that the combination of SAT and high-school GPA tends to overpredict first-year performance in blacks and Hispanics. The study I saw (this was, admittedly, a few years ago and I don’t remember where) was based on graduation rates (not first-year grades) and noted that minorities show weaker correlations than the general population, and that the SAT alone underpredicts graduation rate. In any case, the report you cite is inherently suspect because it was commissioned by the College Board, which has a vested interest in the validity of the SAT as a predictor of college success.
First year-grades are commonly used precisely because graduation rates are much harder to track and because the correlations are weak. The people who do these studies are usually doing them because the maker of a test product wants to prove that the test is effective at winnowing candidates, so they identify a plausible metric of success which their test is good at predicting, and then prove that it predicts it.
Finally, none of this takes away from the legitimate interest in promoting diversity at the collegiate level.
Dewey your cite uses as the ‘success predictor’ the freshman GPA. Is this really a valid predictor, given the wide variance in high schools? Graduation rates have also been used as ‘predictors’ but from the last round of threads on this subject, there was data presented that when one only used a four year scale, minorities graduated at a lesser rate than non minorities, however, when one extended the time to encompass those who took 5 years, the rates evened out.
puddles, still haven’t given a cite for the remark on Jewish students. One half remembered study from one school doesn’t equal a piece of usable data in this discussion. In order to present the data, it needs to first be collected, and since 'Jewish" is not a generally collected ‘field’ on any application forms, I’d suggest that you retract that bit at the very least.
Oh please. The makers of the SAT have a vested interest in making sure their instrument can be put to its best use by college administrators in making admissions decisions. That includes informing those administrators of statistical weaknesses in the test so they can be factored into admissions decisions.
Do you really think that the College Board would try something as stupid as hoodwinking universities, institutions with, y’know, statistics departments which are amply equipped to detect the first whiff of BS? :rolleyes:
Indeed, why does this study – which reports overprediction for some groups and underprediction for others – play into your “vested interest” conspiracy theory? If your goal is less than honest, why not just say that any over/underprediction is statistically insignificant?
Incidentally, first year grades are the best measure to use because they are the most likely to have students taking the same types of classes. Graduation rates and full-career GPAs pull in too many diverse factors, the most notable being the relative difficulty of different majors. I mean, how much sense does it make to compare the success of a P.E. major to that of a mechanical engineering major?
Exhibit “A:” George W. Bush! That moron should not have been admitted to a mediocre community college, but because his daddy went to Yale, so did he! What a joke, and what a sad commentary on the supposedly so great Ivy League schools.
and first year grades may be the least effective measure since that is also the year where:
The new adjustment to college life has begun (ie living away from home, no one checking to make sure you did your homework, attended classes, booze, did I mention sex and booze, etc. etc etc.)
Even within a single school district, with rigid standards etc, the actual reality of ‘how tough is that class’ is quite different. When my son wanted to switch school districts in his senior year, both the counselor at the other school and I assured him that although on paper the classes were the same, the actual levels were absolutely different. Which means that while the classes at the college level are likely to be the same, the levels of the individual students attending are likely to be quite different. The ‘catch up’ factor will thereby be ignored.
Since when is the ‘best predictor of success’ ever legitimately ‘how good are you doing at the very beginning’? Maybe we should re-do the Indy 500 to be the Indy 20, and give the trophy to the one ahead at that point. POint here is that you’re buying into the arguement presented by the people who have the most to loose if the results are different. Kelly’s point is spot on in this case. They’ve got data to suggest that the SAT’s are a good predictor of how students do in their first year. What they haven’t done is examine if ‘how students do in their first year’ is a good predictor of ‘collegiate success’ or even ‘collegiate completion’.
There are several problems with this “interest”:[list=1][li]First of all, as a matter of law, it is questionable whether “diversity” is a compelling state interest which would constitutionally allow the state to discriminate on the basis of race. Justice Powell’s lone opinion in Bakke notwithstanding, many courts have taken a dim view of the diversity rationale for AA in higher education. See, e.g., Hopwood v. State of Texas.[/li]
[li]If diversity of views is the goal of affirmative action, it would be far better to give preferences to foriegn students, to students from varying minority religious backgrounds or to students from fringe political groups. What, really, does an upper-middle-class black kid bring to the table that an upper-middle-class white kid doesn’t? Why is possessing a given quantity of melanin all that is necessary to provide “diversity”?[/li]
[li]Hi Opal![/li]
For some areas of study, the diversity argument is in fact antithetical to what is being taught. Who cares if an engineering student brings a “diverse view” to the classroom so long as his bridges stand? Who cares how about the rich culture of a medical student so long as his patients get better?[/list=1]
wring, did you even bother to read the report I linked to? It includes correlations with graduation and even postgraduation success. It finds that the SAT+HSGPA are the best measures of such success, though the correlation is less strong than with freshman year undergraduate grades. It also notes the difficulties in performing comparisons involving graduation rates, including the things I noted above (an interesting problem with using graduation rates is its “all or nothing” nature – a kid who barely graduates with a C- average is deemed every bit the same “success” as the kid with a 4.0).
Among its findings:
SAT+HSGPA relate “significantly” to graduation.
SAT+HSGPA are better predictors of acceptance into doctoral, medical and law schools than graduation.
SAT+HSGPA are strong predictors of attaining advanced degrees.
SAT+HSGPA are only weakly correlated with nonacademic measures of success such as job satisfaction and community leadership.
Indeed, the report cites to the work of other authors not affiliated with the College Boards, most notably William Bok and Derek Bowen, two pro-affirmative action academics. So the notion that they are skewing their results to favor a predecided conclusions is silly.
You don’t know me, but since you asked, I’ll give you a clue.
I graduated from East Catholic High School in Detroit, Michigan. It was an old building that was extremely cold in the winter and sweltering by spring and summer. Our textbooks were outdated (I specifically remember my English class in ninth grade was made in the 1960’s), grafitti everywhere, pieces of the ceiling falling all over the desks, and I won’t even bother getting into the roach infestations they had. This school is set smack in the middle of Detroit’s Inner City right behind Kettering High School which might have offered better education opportunities but it was far less safe.
Most of my teachers had no college degrees, they knew nothing about the topic they taught. The few teachers that were adept in their field end up leaving due to car thefts in the neighborhood and many other factors that made them fear for their safety. Looking back, my entire 11th grade year was sitting up in Ms. Mitchell’s class watching “The Color Purple” and “Roots” over and over again.
There was no chemistry classes, no AP classes, and only one foreign language class was offered. You HAD to take French. I did fairly well in High School despite going through personal bouts with depression and with my sexuality. I had a strong interest in biology, but after only getting a 19 on my ACT, there was no way I could get into University of Michigan. So I enroll at Oakland Community College to get what my high school didn’t teach me.
For two semesters, my mother had to pool money together from every resource for me to even go to a community college. Which was exactly $985 dollars for 12 credits. After getting to sophmore standing at the community college, I applied to go to U of M and I got accepted. So here I am, a winter transfer student and this is my first semester here.
When I got accepted my mother plainly said, “Baby, I’m happy for you but I can’t afford it” and I knew that. Time I’ll finish, I’ll be thousands of dollars in debt and I can only hope and pray that I’ll come out even in the end.
In the final analysis, SMUsax, you don’t know what I’ve been through. Nor do you know enough about my situation to make an assumption about me taking someone elses spot. Everywhere I look at in University of Michigan there are white students. I find it hard to believe that whites are being underrepresented in the least bit. At least they are given scholarships or have Mommy and Daddy paying for them. I’m not fortunate enough to have either.
Without Affirmative Action, I wouldn’t even be given the chance to be here. I’d probably be on the street corner singing my “shoulda-coulda-woulda’s” to the world. Not only am I meeting people from all over the world, but I am suffused with pride everytime I get an A paper back knowing that I’ve come a helluva long way.
QUOTE]*Originally posted by december *
**Although affirmative action has helped in many ways, it has two huge negatives:
It masks the terrible education being offered in too many inner city schools, and thus reduces the urgency to fix the problems
It puts many minority students in colleges where they don’t belong and from which they don’t graduate. **
[/QUOTE]
I do agree that minorities do suffer, I am suffering now. I am taking chemistry 130 and because I have no chemistry background I am completely lost. Even with three tutors, two chemistry computer programs, and with ungodly hours in the library studying I am still lost. Luckily, nomenclature and Lewis Structures will probably be my savior since they aren’t mathematical and they seem to make the most sense to me.
Still, I know I will graduate from this school, because I can do the work. I’ve come a very long way. I refuse to let a bunch of scientist who thought it would be ‘kewl’ to make a subject based on illogical mathematical reasoning.
I rather disagree with the “far better.” Indeed your examples border on willfully illogical from my view. Neither religious backgrounds nor fringe political groups appear to be (a) coherent classes (b) subject to persistent and consistent bias against them, regardless of other factors. Further, if the middle class or upper middle class black kids’ presence gives the otherwise homogenous student body somewhat different perspectives – and they are bound to having dealt with color bias(*) in their lives – the a useful economic purpose is served. I, for example, need people who do their work without knee jerk skin color judgements. My professional experience has been those people are more likely to come out of experiences where they dealt with folks of other colors (yes and creeds etc.). Given globalization and an ever-more diverse work force, I see a clear argument for AA on some level. We can then add
So, why is a bit of denser melanin providing diversity? Because historical patterns of economic opportunity previously excluded certain densities from full jobs opps, and other densities of melanin had legal advantage, moreover did not have to think about it. Now that is not the case, and it is useful for employers to have people with some modicum of experience handling the same.
(*: Of course you can begin to argue color bias doesn’t exist in our society. I would find that entertaining.)
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Dewey Cheatem Undhow *
**
[li]If diversity of views is the goal of affirmative action, it would be far better to give preferences to foriegn students, to students from varying minority religious backgrounds or to students from fringe political groups. What, really, does an upper-middle-class black kid bring to the table that an upper-middle-class white kid doesn’t? Why is possessing a given quantity of melanin all that is necessary to provide “diversity”? **[/li][/QUOTE]
Let’s try this again.
Affirmative Action, at least in my view, attempts to zap away the complete homogeneity in the collegiate level. No one has any problem with the importation of blacks into the University when they can piggyback thousands upon thousands of dollars off their success. Yet when you take one black kid who doesn’t dribble (Though, I can play basketball pretty good though! :D) or throw a ball for the team, everyone start to get up in arms. Simply incredible!
Melanin has nothing to do with it. Its the cultural differences, the different outlooks on life, which inherently transcends the concept of class or wealth as per your example.
It’s all bout setting up role-models for the next generation. While you may not care that a minority’s contribution to a bridge is insignificant, but to those who are trying to follow in their footsteps it is a great inspiration.
Oh, so because I’m white and I went to college that means Mommy and Daddy were rich and they paid for it all, plus I was given scholarships hand over foot just because of my skin tone?
I’d really like to know who my rich Mommy and Daddy are, and where these scholarships were, because I’d like to have them start sending the checks to the banks I owe student loans to.
Exactly what ‘they’ are you talking about here, because I know you weren’t lumping all white people into the ‘rich and privileged’ category.
Not at all ** catsix **. I will say that most of the white people that ** I ** interact with are financially privileged but I don’t think everyone is that way.
I apologize if my post came off as generalizing. I guess when we feel as if we are bitten, we tend to bite back. My bad. :o
And no, I wasn’t lumping ** all ** white people as ‘rich and privileged’ though the latter isn’t that quite far off.
quite bluntly, the privilege of not having to endure prejudices 'cause you appear to be of a minority instead of white.
Or, is it your position that racism doesn’t exist?
(this does not mean that it’s impossible for a ‘white’ person to suffer from prejudice, I do suggest that at least in the US, it’s more likely to happen to some one of a minority than white)>
The problem with AA is that it is based on the principle that two wrongs do make a right.
If discriminating against someone because he is a member of one "racial"group is wrong- discriminating against someone else for being a member of another such group is also wrong.
