# Anti-achievement at its finest: Acceptance by 20 colleges called "obnoxious" **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 13, 2018, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353 "2018-04-13T16:51:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2018, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353/141 "2018-04-20T16:15:16Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Yes there were a lot of beliefs in that post, along with a couple IMOs. Your beliefs are that AA is _good_ and shouldn’t be described in \*bad \* language. Whatever silliness you’re going on about, I’m not interested in participating. You’ve never shown any actual interest in dialogue or learning about my beliefs, only belittling and insulting. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2018, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353/142 "2018-04-20T16:21:47Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > An Asian or a white kid won’t help meet their goal of diversity. If the goals are to get the best candidates and “diversity”, then whites and Asians are less well-qualified, and thus in less demand. Dammit. I was planning on exploiting my kids’ half-Asianness to get into better schools and more scholarships. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2018, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353/143 "2018-04-20T16:29:10Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > The truth of the myth is not in question. The myth exists. Why does it exist? I suggested the policy of AA is responsible for the myth. An alternative reason for its existence is that people are racist and it is their problem. Well, people were racist before affirmative action and this myth did not exist. “Black people are taking what is ours” is a myth that has existed before and after affirmative action, and this is the myth that is really the crux here. It takes on different flavors from decade to decade, but peel back the layers and it’s remains there. This is why a scholastically brilliant black student was chided on-air for not limiting his options to just a few schools. His success is immediately perceived as a threat that provokes a scarcity mentality. Since his grades and SAT scores are objectively unimpeachable, then he has to be taken down a notch some other way. So let’s imply he’s selfish, greedy, and inconsiderate. Yeah, that’s the ticket. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2018, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353/144 "2018-04-20T16:35:45Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > Dammit. I was planning on exploiting my kids’ half-Asianness to get into better schools and more scholarships. By the “one drop” rule, there is a reasonable chance that you and your kids are black, and can check that box on the application. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2018, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353/145 "2018-04-20T16:39:01Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > By the “one drop” rule, there is a reasonable chance that you and your kids are black, and can check that box on the application. Doubtful, but I’ll check with their mother to see how many black people might be in her Korean ancestry 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2018, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353/146 "2018-04-20T16:39:44Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > Dammit. I was planning on exploiting my kids’ half-Asianness to get into better schools and more scholarships. Both my kids are full Asian (biologically). It doesn’t help - the demand is for highly-qualified blacks (and Hispanics). Because the supply is much lower. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2018, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353/147 "2018-04-20T16:43:14Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Both my kids are full Asian (biologically). It doesn’t help - the demand is for highly-qualified blacks (and Hispanics). Because the supply is much lower. > > Regards, > Shodan But my kids have the option of asian or CAUCasian. Surely, one of them has to be better. If not, my plan to marry a Korean woman and have two kids that have better chances has completely backfired. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2018, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353/148 "2018-04-20T17:20:26Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Should I use more italicized and bolded words? More font sizes? Or should I run-on for post after post without saying anything and listen to Robert Reich audiobooks? What a sarcastic dunce you are. I emphasized my question about Rothbard because it remains my sincere question. I really am curious how Rothbard solves the problem of external costs, and gave you some credit: I thought you were the go-to man for this sort of question. But evidently I was wrong. The only answer you can come up with is to comment on the bolded emphasis intended to draw your attention. Stand back, take a deep breath, and try to picture what a contemptible cretin this makes you appear. How it makes you come across as utterly devoid of any real intellect. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2018, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353/149 "2018-04-20T18:29:57Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Some Dopers see racism much too often. Others object to any charge of racism unless the racist explicitly admits to racism. Isn’t there some middle ground? Give people the benefit of the doubt, but not when the racism is staring us in the face. > > So you think the same inane comment would have been made if the student were white? Yes or No? I think before you accuse someone of a vile motivation like racism, you need to have, you know, evidence. Not feelz or assumptions based on your own prejudice or bias. And yeah, if applying to 20 colleges is not normal, I would assume that it was news because it was unusual, not because the kid was black. Or it may even be that the story was promoted in the first place because someone thought a story about a hard working brilliant young black person would be a good story to tell and the anchors just muffed it. Have you ever watched The View? Idiocy abounds. Television personalities are not necessarily the sharpest knives in the drawer. > [@](#): > > [How about two blacks arrested in Starbucks?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXRFq7e8f54) Neither the manager nor the cops ever said “I hate niggers because they are niggers.” That means it couldn’t have been racism, right? I didn’t follow this at all, so I don’t know the details. What evidence do you have that those two were removed for being black, as opposed to being removed because they were using store facilities without buying anything in violation of store policy? Anything at all? Or are you just assuming that two white people wouldn’t have been treated the same way? Or do you believe that being black means they are exempt from the rules? ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2018, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353/150 "2018-04-20T18:45:03Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I didn’t follow this at all, so I don’t know the details. What evidence do you have that those two were removed for being black, as opposed to being removed because they were using store facilities without buying anything in violation of store policy? Anything at all? Or are you just assuming that two white people wouldn’t have been treated the same way? > > Or do you believe that being black means they are exempt from the rules? It’s hard to know in any given instance. But it seems pretty obvious to me that a black guy in a situation like this is more likely to be seen as threatening - and thus provoke a negative response - than a white guy in a similar situation. [True story that just happened yesterday. My wife teaches in a high school that two of my daughters also attend. Shortly before the kids were about to be let out, a couple of young (20-something) black guys wandered in with pants down low etc. and they went to the office and asked to borrow a scissors. The office asked what that’s about and they said that they had a friend Tyrone who worked there. The office people told them there was no one named Tyrone who worked there but they insisted that there was, and they proceeded to then hang around the place doing nothing and not leaving. At that point the staff got nervous that perhaps these guys were up to no good and when the kids are being let out it’s hard to keep an eye over things, so they send a message that all kids should remain in their classrooms, and they called the police. (My kids said that the message itself provoked a lot of the kids to wander out to see what this was about, but my wife says the kids in her class all stayed in place. :)) When the police came down, it turned out that these guys did have a friend named Tyrone who worked in a warehouse nearby, and they presumably got confused between the school and the warehouse, though why they didn’t leave when told about that is unclear. In any event, this provoked a lot of discussion among school people as to whether the school would have been so quick to call the police if the guys were white. I tend to think it was based more on their dress than on their skin color, but I’m guessing the latter was probably a factor as well.] ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2018, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353/151 "2018-04-20T18:53:30Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > The office people told them there was no one named Tyrone who worked there but they insisted that there was, and they proceeded to then hang around the place doing nothing and not leaving. How does this part happen? Nobody told them to leave? Nobody offered to help find their friend? Everyone just sat around hoping these two guys would leave? ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2018, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353/152 "2018-04-20T18:54:05Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I think before you accuse someone of a vile motivation like racism, you need to have, you know, evidence. Not feelz or assumptions based on your own prejudice or bias. And yeah, if applying to 20 colleges is not normal, I would assume that it was news because it was unusual, not because the kid was black. Or it may even be that the story was promoted in the first place because someone thought a story about a hard working brilliant young black person would be a good story to tell and the anchors just muffed it. Have you ever watched The View? Idiocy abounds. Television personalities are not necessarily the sharpest knives in the drawer. > > I didn’t follow this at all, so I don’t know the details. What evidence do you have that those two were removed for being black, as opposed to being removed because they were using store facilities without buying anything in violation of store policy? Anything at all? Or are you just assuming that two white people wouldn’t have been treated the same way? > > Or do you believe that being black means they are exempt from the rules? See this is exactly how you use the “racism as a crime that must be proven” to blind yourself to racism as an institution in our society. Our country was founded, in part, on racism. Our founding documents institutionalized racism. Our law enforcement system is to a large extent designed to perpetuate white supremacy. In such a system, a member of the group benefiting from pervasive racism never ever has to make a consciously racist choice. He or she can go on living a willfully blind life while benefiting Day after Day from all the advantages of a white supremacist system. As for your specific example—how about all the white customers standing around saying that they hang out at Starbucks all the time without buying anything and never have had to face that kind of treatment? Denying the existence of and impact of racism is one of the most powerful tools for perpetuating racism. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2018, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353/153 "2018-04-20T18:57:41Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > How does this part happen? Nobody told them to leave? Nobody offered to help find their friend? Everyone just sat around hoping these two guys would leave? I’m more confused about how the dialogue went from “Can I borrow some scissors” to “My friend Tyrone works here.” ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2018, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353/154 "2018-04-20T19:02:00Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > How does this part happen? Nobody told them to leave? Nobody offered to help find their friend? Everyone just sat around hoping these two guys would leave? I don’t know whether they were explicitly asked to leave. The school staff may have assumed that once these guys found out that Tyrone didn’t work there they would leave on their own, and once they didn’t they may have then assumed the Tyrone thing was a pretext of some sort. But it could be they were asked, I don’t know. How would someone help find their friend? There are millions of people in the world and once he wasn’t a guy who worked there there’s no reason anyone else could or should find him. (In case this wasn’t clear, the warehouse that Tyrone turned out to work at had no connection at all to the school, other than physical proximity.) > [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > I’m more confused about how the dialogue went from “Can I borrow some scissors” to “My friend Tyrone works here.” Not hard to imagine. I assume the question was why they came here to borrow a scissor and they responded that they had some connection by virtue of their friend Tyrone. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2018, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353/155 "2018-04-20T19:12:38Z")
Yeah, but it seems like the staff just let them stand there until they decided to call the cops. Maybe the guys thought the staff was going to look for Tyrone or whatever. Just seems like a strange story that is missing some info. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2018, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353/156 "2018-04-20T19:12:47Z")
I am white, and I have been asked to leave a coffee shop because my friends and I were just hanging around. And I have seen it happen in stores and coffee shops many times. And as an employee, I have kicked someone out of my store because they were not purchasing anything and I couldn’t keep watching them. There is a Tim Horton’s in the mall where I work, and on many days there is no place to sit for customers because all the tables are being taken up by indigent people or people just hanging around the mall chatting. So for a while, security guards were established to ask people to move along if they weren’t eating, And some had to be hauled away violently when they became belligerent. Now, almost everyone hauled away was an ethnic minority of some sort, simply because they make up a large percentage of the indigent population in that area. So if you as an outside observer happened to observe this shop over a period of a week when they did the enforcement, you would have seen almost exclusively minorities being asked to leave or being hauled out by force. Would you say that was racism? If so, what do you think a reasonable alternative to that situation might have been? And I’m sure there are lots of people of all races who have sat around in coffee shops without buying and not be hassled. Because it comes down to manager discretion. I also assume that if two white kids get kicked out of a coffee shop it won’t make the news, and usually when minorities get kicked out it also doesn’t make the news, because I have to believe that stuff like this happens a hundred times per day across North America. So there could easily be a selection effect here. I also don’t know what that neighborhood is like, what percentage of the customers are also black, etc. In short, I don’t have anywhere near enough information to cry racism. And I’ll point out that the manager lost his job over this, so there is a family out there right now hurting because Starbucks caved to charges of racism. Call me crazy, but I just think that before you hurl around charges that can destroy the life of someone, you had better have the facts and evidence that the person is guitly. And America’s history of racism does not constitute proof of guilt that the manager was being racist. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2018, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353/157 "2018-04-20T19:18:46Z")
Kind of funny that the cops were called 2 minutes after the guys arrived, and the manager didn’t even ask them to leave. But sure, I’m positive it wasn’t racism. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2018, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353/158 "2018-04-20T19:24:04Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > Okay, but for some reason I really doubt we’d see this same story if the student was white. Just like I doubt that a student’s project clock would have been flagged as probably a bomb if they were white. Just like I somehow think the story surrounding a rapist getting 6 months in prison might have been different if they weren’t white. > > I dunno, sooner or later you start noticing patterns like this. There are definitely patterns, and there is definitely institutional racism. All you have to do is look at the disparity in sentencing for similar crimes to see that. I could go on all day about how I think racial relations are screwed up in your country and mine. But you cannot go around accusing individuals of heinous actions and bad motivations based on ‘patterns’. Because that is EXACTLY what racists do when they assume a young black kid must be a criminal because there is so much crime in black neighborhoods. The proper way to behave is to treat people as individuals with dignity, and not make assumptions about them based on their race, where they live, or who they work for. Treat individual cases based on the evidence of that case, and not on some sort of assumption of racial guilt. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2018, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353/159 "2018-04-20T19:28:34Z")
There is a practical aspect here too: when you accuse someone of being motivated by racism and they know in their hearts they are not racist, you just made an enemy. And when you throw around charges of racism in questionable cases like this, you water down the charge when it is applied to a real racist. David Duke and some frustrated manager in a Starbucks and a couple of TV personalities who had a strange take on a story are all now racists. Guess who wins by that comparison? Guess who comes a little closer to having his beliefs normalized? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2018, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353/160 "2018-04-20T19:30:38Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > Kind of funny that the cops were called 2 minutes after the guys arrived, and the manager didn’t even ask them to leave. But sure, I’m positive it wasn’t racism. That store is in Philadelphia. I am guessing that a good percentage of the customers are black, and that usually the cops aren’t called on them within two minutes. And being a Starbucks, I’m sure people loiter sometimes. So what was different about these two? Did they have a history with the store or the manager? Were they being loud or belligerent? Was the store full and they needed the table? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anti-achievement-at-its-finest-acceptance-by-20-colleges-called-obnoxious/812353.md?page=9)