Honesty - thanks for engaging in what seems like a reasonably useful exchange. I have a question that is in no way rhetorical - I don’t know the answer at all (I’m a long way out of college).
How much interaction is there between black and white students at UM? Do the groups mix well in social activities and living groups, or tend to stay apart?
Neither are all Black people poor and unpriviledged. E.g., my cousin’s children had the benefit of AA, although they are upper middle class and were raised in a stable 2-parent family. Their parents between them have two Ph.D. degrees and an M.D. degree. They were accepted at top colleges and did fine, but they would have done fine without preferences, too.
It’s regrettable that AA doesn’t distinguish between advantaged people like my cousins and people like Honesty, who have suffered much greater deprivaton.
Honesty has, unfortunately (or fortunately if various people can learn from it), stumbled into one of the divisions between various groups.
Looked at from the perspective of someone who has had to fight to simply get an opportunity, anyone who has not had the same particular struggle appears to have “had it made.”
From the position of the person who had to struggle against everything except that particular obstacle, claims that they have “had it easy” are so palpably absurd that they are inclined to simply dismiss those words (and all the words) of the speaker.
Stepping back a few years:
A Polish kid from Wyandotte or Hamtramck is liable to have watched his or her father work all the overtime he could get at the auto supplier plant and then pick up extra jobs on weekends and go without vacations or fancier cars just to scrape together enough money to send his six kids to college. When that kid (who never had a shirt or a coat that was not handed down from an older sibling and who had to give up extracurricular activities in high school to take jobs to help cover the costs of school books) is told that s/he “had it easy” they are going to get rather indignant.
Of course, the flip side of that situation has been that the black kid growing up near Conner and Jefferson, in the shadow of the Chrysler plant, or over near 14th and Clairmont, where mansions have been chopped into grubby little tenements, watched his father denied jobs of which the Polish kid’s father had two.
Their children or grandchildren now grow up hearing about how bad it was for their group and see the “other” side as having “not really suffered.”
I have never had anything handed to me and have worked to secure and to keep every job I have had. However, in a couple of jobs I have had and in one apartment, I discovered after I had left that they were practicing a fairly subtle–but quite effective–method of preventing non-whites from successfully applying.
Neither the person who assumes that “they could get ahead if they just worked” nor the person who assumes that “everything came easy to them” is paying quite close enough attention to reality to be permitted to make any such broad claims. It is more helpful if the one group understands that there are obstacles that they have never faced–but it is equally important for the other group to realize that a lot of hard work and sacrifice has been put forth by the first group and that they, too, never had it easy.
Honesty, never feel like you don’t belong where you do. Just continue to work hard and keep your eyes on the prize.
Let me recount an illustrative story on wring’s point regarding a close friend of mine, presently a rising executive in one of America’s major banks. I will refrain from too many details as I don’t believe she would fully appreciate herself being identified, and those in the business, were they reading this thread, might very well.
My friend in question is actually quite conservative, not particularly pro-affirmative action. And she’s presently married to a WASP, super guy I may add. Not the sort to scream racism, on the contrary she rather complains about some black Americans seeing racism where other things are better explanations. However, for all that experience has shown that even a conservatively dressed black woman of conservative politics gets judged by the color of her skin where in general a whitie is not.
Now the story, anecdotal story to be sure but illustrative, from persons I rather trust not to fly off the handle with characterizations. Me and her.
Ms. X is sitting outside of her modest suburban house, in her dope Jeep, chatting on her cell after getting back from work in the city. No rush to get in the house, girl has to talk shop you know, to yours truly. I may add it is darkish, duskish. And my dear friend, Ms. X has lived a year or so in this house. Ah yes, she also has a little mini ‘fro nowadays.
So suddenly the call is interrupted. Rapping on the Jeep’s window. My friend tells me to hold on, someone’s shining a flashlight on her. Convo ensues, I overhear parts although she fills me in afterwards. Man’s voice asks what she’s doing. Friend answers, “I’m on the phone, and?” Man asks again, in rather rude tone what she’s doing here. She replies acidly, “I live here.” Tedious exchange follows. Man leaves. Ms X, my friend, explains that the man is the divorced husband of one of her neighbors, that he doesn’t even live in the neighborhood, only comes by to pick up his kids. She’s seen him around. Apparently he felt that a black person in a Jeep, albeit one in a suit, at dusk in this neighborhood, was suspicious. Needless to say, my friend was deeply pissed.
This is the sort of thing I’ve never experienced, most of all not from a neighbor or relations thereof, except in when in the company of people too dark to ‘blend in.’
I am sure someone will come in to claim the opposite.
However, I rather submit that when we look at objective evidence in regards to discriminatory lending practices (aka redlining), differential patterns of access to health care which go beyond economic explanations, persistent patterns of discriminatory hiring practices popping up, we see a picture of a society that while it has healed a lot of racial wounds, still has many to heal.
Your statement is, at the very least, palpably absurd, and at the very worst is incredibly insulting to me personally.
No one is “throwing up their arms” because black faces can be found at American universities. What people like me are up in arms about are black faces who did not meet the ordinary admissions criteria for a particular institution. I have no problem with a black (or brown, or purple-polka-dot) person who works hard, gets good grades and test scores, and goes to a good school. I do have a problem with schools lowering the bar for those who haven’t acheived at a high enough level to get in.
Do athletes get special treatment? Yeah, unfortunately, and I’m not about to stand up for that. Athletes should also meet ordinary admissions criteria (and should have to meet ordinary continuing GPA standards while they are students). Indeed, failing to hold athletes to strict academic standards does an extreme disservice to the ovewhelming majority who don’t go on to play professionally.
Your point is insulting because it implies that people like me just can’t stand to see black faces at our schools. That just isn’t true, not by any stretch of the imagination.**
And again, I’ve known plenty of boring blacks that don’t add anything to campus “diversity” other than the color of their skin. Look, I remember when I was in high school, this kid across the street lived in the same size house as me, his family drove the same kinds of cars we did, and was in many of the same classes I was in. We had several friends in common. Why on earth should this guy get a boost in the name of “diversity”? Aren’t you better served by seeking applicants who are diverse religiously, politically and geographically?
Indeed, in seeking “diversity,” why are racial groups rather than individuals the relevant entities?**
Please. Jackie Robinson didn’t ask pitchers to slow-pitch to him. True heroes are defined by their abilities and actions, not by artificial constructs.
What is more inspirational – “I became a doctor because I was the best candidate” or “I became a doctor because even though I didn’t have the grades they let me in anyway 'cause I’m black”?
The defeatism in this attitude is just amazing. Do you really think that blacks can’t achieve without the bar being lowered?
Not to mention the horrendous notion that one’s heroes must be of one’s race. Please. How many white boys have Michael Jordan posters plastered all over their walls? Why is it that black youths can’t be inspired by an Einstein or a Hawking?
Oh, but prejudices against me because I’m white instead of a minority (like ‘catsix is white, therefore catsix is privileged’) are perfectly OK?
There are a lot of prejudices that are applied in a lot of directions, wring, but I guess they’re fine by you when they’re directed against white people.
Every race has racist members, and the implication that I, as a white person, am somehow privileged just because of my skin color is in and of itself a very racist characterization.
It’s a slam against all the hard work that I’ve done to suggest that I am where I am because I have privilege due to being white - but it’s alright with you to suggest that, I take it?
How dare you tell me it doesn’t suck for me to be labeled and categorized based on race because I’m not a ‘minority’? You don’t get to decide whether prejudice aimed at me should make me feel bad or not.
It’s neither really.
For the same reasons Insurance companies don’t have individually specific rates my dear fellow. Transaction costs.
Not that there is not, depending on the size and selectivity of the institution, some degree of personalization in the admissions process – and of course there are more than AA filters on admissions (again depending on the college) such as regional balancing.
Boring, by the way is not the point. It is other perspectives, of the sort I referenced in the story I related above. Dealing with other folks, even where there may be tensions. I personally have found that racial issues as a genuine challenge in our society.
You, of course, may not have, although for vastly different reasons.
No, but he did have to fight to get the chance to get in to prove himself.
Or are we absracting away from the issue of barriers to entry?
Leaving aside the inflamatory framing, what’s is inspirational is getting the MD degree.
Of course in the real world of admissions aside from some real standouts on the high and low ends of the spectrum, who is the best candidate, for a job or for admission is a rather gray and ambiguous process. Sometimes ethnicity balances, sometimes alum status of parents, sometimes moola given tilts, etc.
Let’s not play the fantasy game of a perfect competition (i.e. perfect merit) world cause it doesn’t exist. We have an imperfect market with historic barriers to entry.
I really think that
(a) Pervasive patterns of underfunding of minority, and largely black schools are a serious problem on a macro scale
(b) Actual AA programs --as opposed to the political straw man imagery-- which allow consideration of background but do not overweight background, including race/ethnicity help improve an imperfect market in education opportunity
Oh, I don’t think it’s a question of can’t – and there is a serious issue here – however it strikes me that DCU is rather abstracting away from the social history of black America. Perhaps a review of the legacy of racism and the pervasive one can’t do something imagery might inform current attitudes. That and remaining discriminatory practices.
None of this is to,however, deny that Black American communities do suffer from some serious internal problems in regards to percieved bias and actual bias, and exceptionally negative attitudes in re scholarly achievement.
Those are real serious problems of no small import. However, it is also important to understand where they came from.
all very interesting, but of course, not at all what I said. I even put in the disclaimer for you that 'this does not mean that white folks never are treated in a prejudicial manner.
Now, do you have a different point to make?
Oddly enough that is not at all what she said.
It is your knee-jerk reaction, which perhaps describes your openness to examing the situation critically.
And there are a lot of people who flail about angrily without making even a pretext of addressing what the actual argument was.
As well as making assertions and characterizations which appear largely rooted in an emotive reaction rather than a considered examination of the best facts available.
No, she pointed out that being white exempts you from some of the more pervasive discriminatory practices in our society – in re housing, employment etc. As per my anectdote.
Of course you can flail about and call names, but your reaction is against a straw man, not against her statements.
It’s more alright to rant on agaisnt a strawman and utterly ignore her actual point, which was rather considered.
It seems some folks have issues to take care of.
How about, how dare you flagrently mischaracterize someone’s rather reasonable approach with strawmen?
Maybe because wring took it upon herself to assert that because I’m white, I have/had some sort of advantage?
Unless there’s something else meant by ‘privilege’?
Basically what wring said was that ‘sometimes white folks are treated in a prejudicial manner, but it doesn’t compare to when a ‘minority’ is’.
The statement was
Then of course, there was the disclaimer, which contradicts the statement.
So, there’s my repsonse. Why is it that you assert that I either don’t face prejudices, or that the ones I do face are not as big a deal because you assert that they’re less common?
And where’s the privilege here? I really don’t see one, especially since asserting that there is a ‘white privilege’ at all is a prejudicial statement.
Or was it in the question as to whether I think racism exists at all? Why would you ask that? Is it because if I don’t think there’s a privilege to being white, I must be denying that racism exists at all?
Keep flaming, but I only responded to what wiring posted - which was a repeat of the same prejudiced idea that whites are privileged and a really lame assertation that they either never face prejudice, or if they do it’s ‘negligable because minorities face more of it’.
Well, numerically speaking, it doesn’t compare, catsix. Assuming that–as you say–there are racists in all groups and assuming that the level of racism is equally distributed across all groups, then “minorities” are more likely than whites to encounter prejudice against them simply by being minorities.
If you’re equating AA with racial prejudice, is it not sexist as well? What are you more bothered by: the gender discrimination or the racial discrimination in AA?
It clearly isn’t correct to say that white oppression is just as damaging as black oppression because the power differential between the two parties are not equal. This isn’t to say that individual cases aren’t comparable, but on a larger, less personal scale of concern, individual tales of woe can’t stand up against years of deeply entrenched, systematic oppression. Yeah, it might not seem fair but it’s simply the tax white people have to pay. Just like black people have had their asses taxed since 1619.
I don’t remember anyone–wring or otherwise–asserting this. And I don’t understand why you’re personalizing the issue at hand so much.
**
And how is it prejudicial? Is it not a fact that white people–as a whole–have historically enjoyed centuries of freedom that black people–as a whole–have NOT enjoyed and that this disparity was achieved due to proscriptions written in the law? Was not white privledge business as usual ever since the inception of this country?
And suddenly we should believe that history hasn’t impacted the present, and that the generations of today aren’t the result of the achievements and the failures of their descendents?
Even if we did forget history, it’s not so hard to see that whites enjoy a privilege by virtue of being the majority. If you refuse to see this, then you’re either stupid or blind.
**
I would have to question anyone who accepts the existence of racism while denying that power (privilege) always comes into the picture. Sure, a black landlord can discriminate against a white one as easily as a white landlord can against a black one, but when there’s a hundred white landlords to every black one, then OBVIOUSLY white folks looking for an apartment in this situation are privileged. Why can’t you accept this?
Many, many discriminated-against minorities in America now have well above average incomes, including, IIRC Jews, Asians, gays, Italians, and Irish. Why have these groups done better than average?
I think, like Avis, they tried harder. They knew that society wouldn’t give them a fair shake, but they more than overcame the disadvantage. There’s a lot of truth in that old feminist poster, “To succeed, a woman has to do twice as well as a man; fortunatedly, that’s not difficult.” Or, for some, the attitude may have been, “I’ll show them.”
I don’t excuse the kind of racist harassment mentioned by several posters on this thread. However, hurdles can sometimes cause people to become stronger and more able. The positive attitude and determination expressed by Honesty sound like an approach that will lead to success
Or perhaps rather society has had an easier time moving on from discrimination against them?
Look to non-immigrant examples, such as American Indians who are still deeply mired in poverty and reflect similar social trends to much of black America.
In the case of Asians, they were a tiny minority until late this century, not really all that present in American racial escatology (ex-California) and certainly not to the depth of black-white racial idiocy in the USA.
There’s also a lot of rationalization in the above, as well as a disregard for the differential impact of
(a) several hundred years of slavery, among the most tyrranical slave systems known to history
(b) corrosive racism as a matter of state policy until the middle of this century
© attendant anti-black violence aimed at crushing independant and ‘uppity’ blacks
from the more transitional discrimination facing incoming immigrants.
Further, the time frame of Jewish, Italian and others moves (ex-recent Asian immigrants who have largely entered as LMC) to the mainstream was a process of several generations. Say two at least, often three. Now we have how many since Civil Rights for all became the law of the land? Let’s be generous and say it’s the effective law of the land, largely uncontested by the 1980s.
Sit back and think december about time frames.
Yes, that’s true. And we need more Honesty and fine women like my friend who are the full-steam ahead types, as opposed those to ready to give in. There is far, far too much of that in Black America, and that has to be admitted.
However, to sit back and make unfair comparisions with immigrant groups which have not experienced the same internal history as blacks, or indians is to take an overly rosy viewand ultimately render disservice their efforts.
University admissions are not insurance companies; it is one thing to allocate risk using the law of large numbers, quite another to allocate university seats based on literally skin-deep labels. And, as noted, there are far better correlates for ideological diversity than skin color.**
Of course, I never said that racial issues weren’t a genuine challenge to our society. I just think AA is a piss-poor method of addressing those issues, a method that creates more problems than it solves.**
Jackie Robinson faced barriers to entry that were unrelated to his ability to play the game of baseball. Those barriers in the context of higher education have thankfully long since been removed. No college or university in this country forbids a person to attend on grounds of their racial background.
They do, however, demand that applicants meet certain academic standards. Those standards are directly related to one’s ability to perform academically. To reduce those standards is tantamount to requiring pitchers to slow-pitch to Jackie Robinson at a baseball tryout.
**
Possibly, though I do note that many school systems which are predominantly black are in large cities which spend more per pupil than other school districts. At any rate, the answer here is to fix the ailing schools, not to send people off to an academic environment for which they unprepared.
And frankly, the “inner city black kid” isn’t to be found in great numbers in institutuions of higher learning anyway. I certainly know that most of the blacks I attended college and law school with were from upper-middle-class families. They certainly didn’t attend underfunded, underperforming schools.**
This is patently false. Kindly read the facts of the Hopwood case, which I linked to earlier. In typical admissions programs, while lip service is paid to race being a mere “plus factor” considered along with a student’s entire background, in practice the disparity between black and white applicants is a huge chasm. Far from being a mere tiebreaker, race ends up as the single most important factor in the admissions process.
Of course, there could not be any chance that second generation immigrants from Europe could blend into the general population once their accents had disappeared while blacks can be discriminated against on sight.
There could not be any chance that some blacks accepted an attitude of defeat simply to preserve their lives after such minor incidents as the total destruction of the wealthy black neighborhood in Tulsa in 1921, the general riots in Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, and even Duluth between 1916 and 1923 in which blacks were murdered with impunity for being “uppity” or in the 1943 riot in Detroit during which white Kentuckians, brought in to work in the war-time industries, rioted against blacks for accepting government housing near the whites–after which the police blamed the blacks for not simply abandoning their houses and, thus, “provoking” the whites.
There is, surely, no possibility that when blacks were denied entrance to trade unions (while European immigrants were welcomed) or when major industries acted on a “last hired-first fired” policy (hiring blacks only after the immigrant pool was exhausted and laying off blacks, first, when the economy slipped), there would be any repercussions within the black community.
The fact that throughout the first six decades of the 20th century blacks who were offered jobs as foremen or supervisors were routinely threatened with death or maiming would have no affect on that group’s attitudes toward the larger society.
The treatment of blacks during the 1923(?) Mississippi floods, when thousands were rounded up and forced to camp on levees, being inducted as forced labor to preserve white farms and towns while being compelled to abandon their own properties to the floods would certainly not have affected any group’s attitudes toward the value of holding and preserving property which they realized they would never be allowed to protect.
Nope, the immigrants simply “tried harder.”
As Col has pointed out, there are, indeed, serious issues within the black community that need to be addressed. Current attitudes in which schoolkids are jeered for “acting white” if they score too highly or participate in class certainly need to be addressed. There is also the possibility that the growing black middle class may be failing to reinvest their own time and money in the neighborhoods that they have escaped.
However, the notion that those attitudes arose out of some inherent problem of the black community with no historical precedent and for which the larger society bears no responsibility and that they would really have succeeded if they had “just tried harder” is to deny that history has any bearing on any aspect of life or reality.
I suspect that history has a great deal more to do with life than many people would like to admit.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by december *
**Many, many discriminated-against minorities in America now have well above average incomes, including, IIRC Jews, Asians, gays, Italians, and Irish. Why have these groups done better than average?
I think, like Avis, they tried harder. They knew that society wouldn’t give them a fair shake, but they more than overcame the disadvantage. There’s a lot of truth in that old feminist poster, “To succeed, a woman has to do twice as well as a man; fortunatedly, that’s not difficult.” Or, for some, the attitude may have been, “I’ll show them.”
Tried harder than whom? Blacks?
I suppose it doesn’t matter than all of these groups came to this country as immigrants rather than as chattel, and that–with the exception of Asians–they have enjoyed the privilege of being considered white for most of their histories in this country. Or do these important considerations not matter in your analysis?
I find it amazing–almost laughably so–that you would point to that saying of the “old feminist poster”, despite the fact that women–white women–have been the primary beneficiaries of AA and other so-called “lower the bar” policies. And funny, women are still faring less than men, both economically, socially, and politically. Are they not following their own advice? Why can’t they be more like those Asians?
Not really. Jackie Robinson had already batted against some of the most talented pitchers baseball had to offer. Disproportionately large numbers of minority students have gone to substandard schools, been taught by incompetent teachers, and been forced to attempt learning in social environments that make academic excellence
To put your analogy in terms that are actually analogous, Branck Rickey doesn’t just grab some kid who’s barely been allowed to play the game and make him the starting second baseman for the Dodgers. But the Dodgers might well, from time to time, see if they can find some athletically gifted kids who’ve never played and give them a rookie league tryout to see how hard they can hit the ball. You’ll have to pardon me if I don’t see this as a crime against humanity, when hundreds of privileged kids who have played the game their entire lives wash out of rookie ball every year.
Don’t misunderstand me here. I detest the blatantly discriminatory quota systems used by some universities–formerly used by UT and the California system, and I believe still used by Michigan and some other schools–that assigned extra “admission points” to applicants based purely on their ethnic background. (I detest even more the legacy system described earlier in this thread by Collounsbury.) But at the same time, I value ethnic, religious, and class diversity in our universities and our workplaces, and I cannot begrudge any institution that goes out of its way to achieve it through simple appreciation of the reality of race in America.
Nothing like an argument.
What is the bit about “ideological” diversity kemo sabe? That’s your little chesnut, not mine.
Skin deep labels have society deep meanings, often ugly ones at that, and differences in lived experiences, again often difficult ones, even when controlling for income.
I see this as a valuable point, you evidently don’t.
Teasing out all such items of course is an item of transaction costs, I stick by the analysis in the context of your statement.
Does it?
Which aspects? How are you weighting the costs and benefits? Have you applied objective standards, or are we off in anti-AA assertion land?
Further, what policies, if any would you suggest, and please do be explicit in regards to the actual remedies.
Have they? It’s nice to make that claim, but in my mind the piss-poor state of pre-college education in this country, the disturbing patterns on a national basis of poor funding for minority schools etc strike me as barriers to entry, fundamental ones at that.
Yes, and if you come from certain backgrounds such as child of funder, legacy you get preferential access, in many systems.
Clearly ethnicity and race are not the only exceptions to ‘academic standards’ – indeed there even regional balancing used in some systems.
I would note there is no small amount of controversy regarding the nature and depth of the relationship.
No it’s to take into account differing backgrounds, rather more like the training camp manager, if we are to continue with strained analogies, deciding to give a set of players who look like potential prospects but haven’t had the opp to play right a shot on the field.
Yes, a few large systems do indeed meet that wonderful scarecrow: however if I recall correctly if one scratches the data one finds low actual spending per pupil, versus admin overhead and other bullshit. Ah, the NYC school system in all its horrors.
Given of course that (a) local schools are beyond the reach of national policy (b) the depth of the problem is so great, I see no problem in some level of balancing above all as I question the degree of ‘unpreparedness’ in this connection.
Well if we are to argue personal anecdote, then I will counter that most black kids in my Ivy education came from lower working class backgrounds (oddly often immigrant also) and note that even my friend cited above, although she went to a private school, did so through scholarship.
Now, that leaves us where?
Yes, we have a case. Now, one data point in my statistical training does not give us a characterization of the entire picture.
I should be very happy to revise my opinion in regards to the straw man statement if you have a valid data set which adequately samples college and university admissions across the USA.
I don’t think racisim is an ‘institutional’ thing, I think it is an ‘individual’ thing, which is why I can believe it exists but not think that all white people are privileged.
I think it sucks that there are people who believe I had things handed to me because I am white, or who would even make a comment like ‘well white students had Mommy and Daddy pay for it all or they got scholarships which us black folk can’t get’. I think it sucks that anybody’s getting judged on the basis of their race, but I don’t think that it’s all of society like some people say it is.
And maybe I can’t accept it because you assumed that where a person theoretically can discriminate, that he will. What about the landlord who doesn’t care what color the tennant is as long as the rent is paid and the place isn’t trashed? Don’t those exist?
As for the generalizations about ancestry and the achievements that exist because of it, I really hope you’re not under the impression that most of the white folks in this country are directly descended from those few rich landowners who showed up on the Mayflower, because most aren’t.
You asked why I personalized? Because someone made a very broad characterization about my race, and I’m not going to stand for such bald faced inaccuracies. I wouldn’t expect you to sit quietly by and say nothing if someone were characterizing a group you belong to, so don’t expect me to.
Until you can point out exactly what privilege I get by being white, you are not entitled to call me either ‘stupid’ or ‘blind’. This isn’t the area for that kind of name calling anyway, so I guess you should start making your points without personally attacking my intelligence.
AA is a racist policy. It’s also a sexist one. It’s built around the idea that two wrongs make a right, that because it’s not OK to discriminate on one group based upon race or sex, it is therefore necessary to discriminate against others based on race or sex. And it’s an insult to me. I absolutely despise the notion that I need special help because women are under represented in certain areas. You can say I’m ‘personalizing’ the issue all you want, but I’ve been the only chick on the job before. I’ve been in a union shop where, as a temporary laborer I didn’t get union protection, but I did get told every day what kind of lowlife disgusting scum I was to let a quota take a job away from a man with a family. I’ve been in the position where I got to be told by my boss that I only had the job because AA and the EEOC told him he had to hire a woman.
I hated it then, and I hate it now. I really would’ve rather ‘lost out’ on that job and had to continue the job hunt than have been there. As for my current profession, I’d find it nothing short of an insult to my abilities for anyone to suggest that AA got me the job I have. I have a very, very severe dislike for any program that exists to repeatedly tell me how disadvantaged I am because ‘women are an under-represented minority in certain fields’ and that without a leg-up or a handicap from some suit in an office in Washington DC I can’t do it. That’s annoying.
I think AA is every bit as sexist as it is racist, and get this, I despise both parts of it equally!
What makes me even more disheartened is to see you say that you realize it’s unfair that one race or sex has had to pay an unfair share of something in the past, so turnabout is the way to go. Who gives a damn if it’s equitable - it’s being unfair to THEIR side now.
I’d like to see AA go the way of the dinosaur. Extinct. People should be getting jobs and positions in college based on personal merit, not on some artificial tinkering with the requirements until the ‘right’ mix of races and sexes is met.