I am much troubled by “affirmative action” and my lefty credentials are solid. My problem reflects John Mace above: what the hell is “black”, anyway. If I claim to be black on my application, how are they gonna know? I’m about one eighth Cherokee, am I more “colored” than someone whos a sixteenth Afro? If we are to eliminate the concept of race from our system, we must be willing to eliminate it entirely, root and branch. I loath racism in any form, however benign the face it presents.
On the other hand, and we liberals always have the “other hand”, I agree that diversity is a good thing, an enlightening thing. But there simply has to be a better way to do it. My best guess is an economic based preference: poor people are much more diverse than rich people, you can bet your butt on that.
On this issue, as much as it grinds my 'nads, GeeDubya is ri…is ri… is not entirely wrong.
While there are MANY people in the US who oppose the type of racial “affirmative action” at the U of M, I think it would be hard to find many people who would oppose a version that relied soley on some form family poverty level.
Well, of course, Bush’s vehemence is perfectly understandable since he obviously earned his membership into Yale society based * solely* on the wonder twin powers of Scholastic Merit and Hard Work. I mean, come on! The admissions office was probably busting down his door after they viewed his stellar transcript and SAT score. Given his well-known reputation for academic excellence and almost uncanny intellectual prowess, he certainly makes my nominee list for the “Best Spokesperson Against Affirmative Action to Ever Step in Front of a Microphone”. If anyone has credibility in denouncing biased policies among school admission committees, it’s gotta be George.
And he couldn’t have timed this admonishment at a better time. If Pickering wasn’t enough to coax blacks to the Republican side, this will definitely reel them in by the bucket full.
Oh yeah and that reference to MLK that he threw out there…PURE GENIUS.
What a great question. I had never thought of this before either. So I called them. Yep, looked up the admissions office and called and asked. I was told “There is a lot of trust invloved” and basically, if the student self identifies as a minority then that is good enough for them. I asked, for example, if one grandparent was a minority, does that count? and was told that there is no set guidline or ratio of minority/non-minority ancestry. It is up to the student. FWIW.
It is not a quote system. Was it one time? I do not know. december, your “someone on TV” should realize that even if the 20-point figure was based on a target (and I have no idea if it was), things change over time. If this year we get a lower number of quality underrepresented minority students, then we’ll end up admitting fewer. We don’t have quotas, and the quality and number of applicants of color ultimately determine how many applicants of color we admit–and ultimately enroll. Obviously that varies. And that is also true of women, basketweavers, nursing majors, etc.
As for me, I see George W. Bush as someone who obviously benefitted from the principle behind U-M practice: that an individual’s value and potential shouldn’t be measured solely by test scores and GPA.
Way to go on the legwork, Rhum! Interesting! All you gotta do is identify yourself as being “minority” and that’s that? Amazing. Got two bucks says it happened. Some mayonaise on white bread kid from the 'burbs said “Screw, I’ll just tell them I’m black, what the hell do they know”.
As Cranky said here december, despite what your gut tells you, this is not a quota system, it is a preference system.
In other words, the University does not have a minimum number or percentage of minority students that it admits. That would be a quota. Instead it gives preference to minority, disadvantaged, athletes and legacy students. Thus U of M uses preference.
People are so smart at “working the system” that I’m surprised it isn’t used a lot (that is, pretending to be a minority). I’d love to see one of our “lefty” pro-affirmative action folks expain how they would police the system. What constitutes being a minority? Is my co-worker from Spain a Hispanic? How about the blonde, blue-eyed guy whose great-grandfather was an Indian, and still gets to be on the official tribal list. If they need any help, I think they could dig up the old Apartheid rules from South Africa. They had all kind of ingenius tests, like the “pencil in the hair” test, where you were black if a pencil put in your hair didn’t fall out.
Thanks. The person I spoke with was quick to point out that lying on an application is grounds for dismissal, but as you say there really is no way to check. At the close of our conversation they were also quick to point out that they are not the official spokesperson of the uiversity etc. etc. etc. My point in relaying my conversation is not to try and get anyone in trouble, so let’s not all be calling them m’kay?
I am totally against using race as a criterium. The whole idea of equality is equality, not some more equal than others. The idea that if you oppose reverse discrimination you are a racist is ludicrous. Racism is judging by race and that is what reverse discrimination is. For once the President is right.
But they already have a point system based almost entirely on family poverty level: if your parents graduated from U of M, you’ve got a better chance of getting in.
True, that discriminates against the poor. But who’s counting?
I’d be a lot more willing to do away with race preferences if we could simultaneously do away with legacy preferences and SAT preferences: both of these indirectly favor the rich, and even more indirectly favor whitefolks (who are disproportionately wealthy).
But if we do away with preferences favoring nonwhite folks and keep the preferences that favor white folks, then we’ve got a problem.
UT Law grad checking in. I was in the last class admitted before the Hopwood ruling took effect. As you can imagine, the topic gripped the campus pretty tightly. I wrote this about the Hopwood case in another thread on AA, and I continue to believe it:
The Michigan system is similar. It’s a minsomer to say you get 12 points for a perfect SAT score – according to the point chart listed above you only get zero points if your SAT was below 920. I’d bet very few applicants to Michigan have scores in that range. I’d bet the overwhelming majority of applicants have SATs over 1000 – meaning that the number of points you get for having a perfect SAT is really 2.
Another AA argument is that legacy admissions amount to the same thing. But clearly they don’t, at least not at Michigan – legacies get only 4 points if their parents went to UM, and only 1 point if it’s some other relative.
I note that Michigan has a 20 point kicker for applicants from poor socioeconomic backgrounds. Kudos for them. That begs the question, though: a poor black applicant would still get his 20 points for his application (the point sheet indicates that you can only get the socioeconomic kicker or the race kicker, but not both). Which means that the race kicker is effectively only going to well-off minorities. Why do the sons of black doctors and lawyers need these extra points?
As a “lefty” Mr Mace, I tell you how I would police the system…I wouldn’t. Exactly as they are now.
Is a white American guy whose folks are from South Africa an “African American”? You betcha. Is your friend from Spain “Hispanic”? Certainly, by definition. On the official tribal list…then you sure you’re an Indian.
I don’t care how it’s policed. In fact, it seems to me the less it’s policed, the more legal it is. Reason being, that un-policed it’s even less discriminatory.
Your last paragraph is a great point! The system is set up to ESPECIALLY favor well off minorities.
I agree that the whole legacy thing is outdated. In fact, it should be illegal at PUBLIC instituitions. And most of these institutions are old enough that they probably did dsicrimate against Blacks in the past, and so the legacy system is likely to have an element of racism built in. I wonder why none of the civil rights folks have challenged that aspect of the system.
DanielWithrow if you look at the link I posted above you will see that the same points available for minority status are also available for “socio-economic disadvantage.” Striking the racial criteria from U of M’s system would still allow points to be given to those who actually come from a disadvantaged background.
One of my biggest problems with AA is that it places a stigma on minority students, i.e. you only got in because you are _____. Moving to an exclusively socio-economic system does away with that entirely. The black kid might be the son of a doctor, the white kid the son of a janitor. No one can tell just by looking at you, and that is the way it is supposed to be, right?
Good response! I can’t think of any type of policing that wouldn’t be even more farsical than giving someone extra points because of their skin color or the combination of letters in their last name.
Dewey, I presume the rationale is that money does not eliminate all of the disadvantages that underrepresented minorities face in the traditional test score-and-GPA measures.
I don’t know what evidence there is to support that belief, however.
