Is the proposition “most students at well-known four year colleges do not come from poor economic backgrounds” really necessary to prove via statistics? And as for student athletes – even if every single player on Michigan’s football and basketball teams have full rides, and we add a smattering of scholarships for other sports, that’s still a VERY small percentage of the undergraduate population.
No, but a claim that the the majority of black kids receiving points for being black are middle class or better does.
For that matter, it would be interesting to see how many applicants get any of those points and how they are broken down. Are women, for example, in the “underrepresented” group. Your statement was “As a practical matter, those 20 points effectively are only handed out on the basis of skin color.” I think that this is possible, but I think the assertion should not go unchallenged, since conclusions drawn from that assertion may be tainted by any error in it.
Otherwise, I’m sure we can point to the obvious discrepancies in lending patterns to white and black homeowners and simply “understand” that it is based on race, right? 
Tom:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m assuming you more or less support the U of M AA program, or at least wouldn’t want the court to force them to change.
In that case, do you support giving extra points to well off minority students? That is, do you feel that if you’re a minority kid whose family is doing well, you’ve gone to a decent high school, etc., that you need an edge to compete for slots against “white” kids at a school such as U of M?
And if you don’t, can you concede that the points given for socio-economic disadvantage serves your goal of AA?
I’m trying to understand the rational of giving an edge to well off kids. And, BTW, I don’t support the whole legecy thing either, so I’m not defending those well off kids getting an edge. If this case were about legecy, I’d be just as much in favor of the court getting rid of that at state schools, too.
No, I don’t particularly support UoM’s policy. I simply prefer that such arguments be based on the facts. UoM claims they want diversity. I have not seen any arguments against diversity, simply statements that they are “favoring” blacks. Yet, a look at the rules UoM has published could be used in many ways to provide for a wide variety of people to get in.
It has been asserted that black kids just “get” 20 points. Maybe they do, but that is not what the rules say. The rules say that being black is one of several options–all mutually exclusive–to provide up to 20 (out of 150) points to an applicant.
If we’re worried about letting in a few rich black kids at the expense of a few middle class white kids, then what are the numbers? What has UoM actually done?
Tom:
I’m just wondering why a supporter of AA couldn’t live solely with the socio-economic angle and get rid of the race thing all together. It seems like the the AA supporters are the ones who are worried about the “few well off minortiy kids”, since all the others could presumable get their 20 points for being socio-economicall disadvantaged.
And yes, the 20 minority points are one of several options, but ONLY available to the selected minorities (listed as Black, Hispanic, or Native American).
But if you don’t support the U of M system, then maybe I’m asking the wrong person.
I’d still like to see whether “well off minority kids” are even getting the points. (And I will not be surprised if they are.) However, it is also possible that the points are going to minority kids who are only slightly above poverty level–high enough not to qualify as poor, but in need of some assistance to get their diverse numbers up.
A bit off topic for this thread, but one reason I do not unilaterally and comprehensively oppose all AA programs is that there are still people out there who are suffering for their appearance or ancestry. Every effort that I have seen to offer inclusion based on economic levels that are “color blind” have tended to leave out the minority groups. People who claim that simply providing all assistance based on color blind economics always appear, to me, to be willfully denying that racism is a strong component of out society. I tend to be less sympathetic to the cries of a majority that is making few efforts to actually be color blind when they cry that things are not “fair.” So, in this argument, I want to see evidence that UoM has acted in an unfair manner. So far, I have seen only assertions.
Tom:
Your last post made me think about a different aspect of this whole thing. You mentioned “get their diversity numbers up”. I wasn’t sure how the U of M system could be conisdered a quota system before, but now I think I do.
A school has a certain “goal” for diversity and the only way to measure that is to look at % of the various racial/ethnic groups. For simplicity sake, lets just talk about blacks and whites. They look at their pool of white applicants and their pool of black applicants and see what points adjustment need to me made so that they get whatever % black students they thing they need. They then add those points (20 in this case) to each of the black applicants total, and voila, they have diversity.
They didn’t technically reserve a certain number of slots for blacks, but they rigged the system so that it has exactly the same effect.
Maybe this isn’t a great revalation to a lot people, but I hadn’t thought about it that way before. I wonder if we’ll see that in the court’s analysis.
You know, I almost don’t blame the U of M folks for setting up this system. They’re supposed to have “diversity” and so they go about doing it the easiest way possible.
No, it doesn’t, because a poor black kid who did not have access to the racial kicker would still get his points via the socioeconomic kicker. Thus, the only black kids who get points exclusively for being black are middle class or better.**
Look at the chart. It specifies “underrepresented racial or ethnic minority.” Thus, by its own terms, the 20 points are not awarded based on gender.
The standard is “socio-economic disadvantage” and that need not be limited exclusively to abject poverty.
And the numbers are?
—First of all, you haven’t shown that the legacy candidates at Yale were admitted chiefly because they were legacies.—
Wasn’t trying to.
What are you playing at anyway Mace? Your objections are immaterial to the principle of admission by merit. The interesting point is that, whatever the reasons for giving precedence to legacy students, it seems hard to justify being for one non-merit preference and against another. I don’t think public colleges can really justify either.
Of course, my vote for the most egregious violation of merit is for sports programs, wherein schools not only admit them to profit off of them, but they have actually gathered together to prevent each other from paying these students (usually relatively poor) for their services.
OK, I’ll take another stab at this…
We have 2 students, A and B. They live in the same neighborhood and go to the same high school. The fathers are both partners in the same law firm and both fathers make $400,000. They live on the same block and their houses have the same floor plan. They both appraise at $658,000. Dang, these kids are nearly clones.
They both got GPAs of 3.05 and their fathers were dissappointed.
Good for 60 points each.
They both got the same SAT scores of 1150. Not very good for kids from their neighborhood but since they both smoked the same amount of dope right before the test it’s understandable.
Good for 10 points.
They both live in Michigan in a swell Detroit suburb. I know some great people from Michigan so we won’t hold that against them.
Good for 10 points.
Neither A nor B is socioeconomically disadvantaged, neither one is a man going into nursing, neither one is a scholarship athlete, and they don’t know the provost and he’s cheap with points anyhow.
Subtotal…80 points for A, 80 points for B. Dead even so far, I told you they were nearly clones.
But wait, student A had a minority mother so he gets the extra 20 points for underrepresented minority. Great, 100 points for A, he’s in !! Good Job !! Student B is our proverbial “white kid” mentioned in many of the earlier posts. Awww, that’s too bad white kid, you don’t get into the University of Michigan. Tough luck, maybe you should try for Wayne State.
Student A just got punished because of his skin color. What did he do to deserve that ?
FWIW, the men in nursing bonus is bogus also because it punishes women in nursing among others.
Apos:
Not playing at anything. I’ve said several times on this thread that I think legacy has no place at public institutions. But here we’re talking about race, and that’s what the lawsuit is about.
No he didn’t. In point of fact, Student B got rewarded for his ethnicity. Reward B =! Punish A
I can practically already write the Supreme Court opinion. 5-4 against Michigan, restricting the range within which race can be considered under Bakke, but sticking to the facts of the case so that there is no real guidance for what is and is not acceptable.
Sometimes, I really hate O’Connor and her insistence on splitting factual hairs.
I’m uncertain of what you mean, minty. If your point is that B didn’t necessarily get A’s spot, I agree. It’s unclear that A would have been accepted even if B hadn’t gotten 20 bonus points.
But, that’s just a quibble with how Doctordec’s example was presented. Student B got somebody’s spot, because there are a fixed number available, although it may not be known whose spot B got. This paradox may help explain the popularity of preferences. It’s easier to identify the person who got helped than the one who got screwed.
Thought experiment:
Selective State U. takes 10,000 incoming freshmen each year. The overwhelming majority–like 95%–are white.
Selctive State U. decides that’s a shitload of white folk, especially considering the population of the state of Selective is 20% Hispanic and 12% black. So SSU decides they’re going to increase enrollment by a mere 1,000 freshmen per year, and they’re gonna make damn sure that there are a bunch more non-white students.
So, Student A–who never would have been admitted under either system–is he “punished” when Student B gets in?
A: Heck no, A isn’t punished. Rewarding B may or may not be legal, but A ain’t punished.
Nonsense. You talk as if the spot belonged to someone else and Student B stole it. That’s a load of crap.
The only owner of those spots is the UofM, and they are both wise, and following the law when they treat minorities as inherenently more valuable to the student culture then white boys.
In point of fact, Student B got Student B’s spot, because by the standards of UofM, he was the most deserving. That’s what really pisses off the Republicans: It’s the notion that minorites are actually more valuable then they are in some contexts. Equality they can tolerate (barely), but being judged inferior just really bugs them.
A pretty good test for racism is to reverse the terms and see how it sounds. Reverse “minorities” and “white boys” in the above statement and I think you’ll have a pretty good description of the University of Alabama’s reasons for excluding James Meredith from the student population.
Surely it’s wrong to consider the quantity of melanin in one’s skin as a primary determinant of a person’s value. Worth should be determined on other criteria. I humbly suggest the content of one’s character.**
Yes, I do have a problem with people being judged inferior based solely on skin color. I thought we passed a law in 1964 as a remedy for precisely that problem.
A bit disingenuous, this morning?
Meredith was excluded, with no hope of appeal (beyond going to the government), based on his color. Student A had the opportunity to increase grades, do better on the SAT, do more community service, write an outstanding essay, and several other (rather subjective) activities to change his status. (He can also reapply next year after Ace-ing some community college courses when he might have a different set of Student B types to match up against.) He has not been condemned and barred forever from darkening the door of UoM. Your claim that melanin is a primary determinant is simply wrong.
Given that all else is equal, the school can either flip a coin to admit a student or it can look for non-academic tie-breakers. They have instituted a number of the latter for the purpose of ensuring a more diverse student population. The diversity aspect of their selection is simply marketing. By encouraging and publicizing the diversity of their student body, they can attract other high-caliber students who believe that such a student body will provide a more well-rounded education. Given that marketing approach, they are adding weight to the selection process that will encourage more diversity among equal candidates. Superior candidates of any group–even white males–are included as a matter of course.
You can argue that diversity is a chimaera or that it does not attract any better students or that schools should not be in the habit of marketing themselves. However, the claim that color is primary is simply not true. This is especially true when one notes that the point system is only one (subjective) evaluation out of several used by the admissions department. If ethnic background was entirely removed from the point system, there is no reason to believe that Ms. Gratz or Ms. Grutter would necessarily have been admitted anyway.
In my example skin pigment IS the gating factor. Remember these kids are clones except for melanin. Equally heavy in skin tone, they’d both get in. Equally pale, neither gets in. One pigmented, one not, pale kid gets punished with exclusion.
Seems pretty primary.