Well Fiveyearlurker get in there and start breeding
otherwise your problem is rather hypothetical
While you are at it, get a copy of the UK film Educating Rita.
I went to a highly selective place, we frequently asked about entry criteria, and were told that we were selected on the basis that we could get a First.
Personally I did not buy that line, we had to send in a photograph, and the one I sent in made me look worse than a Tramentino villain, which was handy as I landed up as the intellectual and physical muscle (good on concepts, and not to be messed with - or my mates)
Smarts like smarts, which is why you are shacked up with your lass.
Breed the kids, then worry about the problems.
There is a lot to be said for AA, but I detest that it is not colour blind.
Y’know, the other thing is that this really isn’t your decision. I mean, you can give advice and offer your opinion (so it’s probably a good thing that you’re putting thought into it), but in the end, it’s your kid that’s going to fill out the form and s/he’ll have to decide whether or not s/he feels right accepting AA help or not. (I know, it’s weird to think about your kids making their own life decisions when they’re not even concieved yet, but trust me, it will happen.)
If they want to identify as Indian, they should. There’s nothing inherently wrong with checking a box that you feel describes your ethnic/cultural background. I check off the race box not because of the economic windfalls I perceive coming my way, but because I self-identify as a black person and I’m not ashamed of it. (Nor do I purposefully want to shock people when I show up at the job interview, wearing all brown:D ).
What follows from there is out of your hypothetical children’s hands.
To turn the OP around, what if we still lived in the day and age where racist laws were still enforced, and being a racial minority was a distinct disadvantage. Would you encourage their children to downplay their Indian-ness? If you say yes, then it would make sense to be consistent and encourage them to play “up” their minority status in an age of AA. Life isn’t and will never be fair. But if you feel identity is more than getting one over on the system, then you would encourage your kids to answer race/ethnicity questions honestly, damn the consequences or rewards that follow.
As far as whether they should get benefits…well, I suppose the answer rests on what you consider to be AA’s intent. Is it only about uplifting individuals that have been actively discriminated against? In that case, then most people favored under AA would be ineligible. Including, possibly, your wife. But if you see it as program designed to increase access to institutions that have been inacessible to certain groups in the past–and in doing so creating at least the appearance of fairness and equal opportunity for future generations–then hiring even well-to-do minorities would fulfill this intent.
If you’re teaching a school that has a predominately Indian student body and most of the faculty is non-Indian, the fact that an Indian job candidate comes from a comfortable background will not serve as a detriment when looking on that candidate as a potential role model. I’m basically ambivalent about AA, but it’s situations like this one that keep me from being against it.
Right, but we’re not talking about self-identifying as Indians, we’re talking about AA. We’re talking about checking that racial box as if it were the seeking of AA placement.
If you prefer, if it changes your answer, assume there is a row of boxes for racial identification, and a “If a federally recognized minority, do you want us to consider your race in our point system for determining admission? Check yes or no.” prompt.
That’s what* I* was referring to by mentioning the boxes, anyway. “Check the box” was easier to write repeatedly than, “Seek preferential admission on the basis of her race.”
But there are no forms that state that, right? I mean, I’m not against Affirmative Action in theory, but I wouldn’t want to respond to such a question.
But no, it doesn’t change my answer to Fiveyearlurker.
I don’t know. I don’t remember, and the last such forms I filled out was years ago. I do know that schools are often required by the state to collect racial data on their students, and will try to do so even if they have no AA or preferential admission point system. Such point systems DO exist, and have been mostly found permissible by law. Whether or not students are made aware of them on the admission forms, I do not know. Whether they may choose whether or not to have their race considered, I do not know. But the OP seems to be working under the assumption that they can, even if simply by “passing” as caucasian.
While it seems that it would be perfectly fine for you to advise he claim AA status, I think it worthy to consider one benefit of NOT having him seek AA benefits. Just think that when he is out of college the extra sense of accomplishment he may feel having made it over the hurdle after not only not getting a boost up, but turning down a boost up. If it were my kid, I would view that as the best possible outcome and hope to steer him there.
One other thing, I do not perceive any baggage attached to being Native American, aside from the problems that exist on the reservations. I know quite a few people who are half Native American and there all doing quite well. Then again, I live in California. Elsewhere might be different.
School admissions is a sticky wicket even without racial considerations. If one is going to opt out of race-based preferences, then they should also obscure their gender, socioeconomics, geography, disabilities, whether or not their parents are legacies, and a host of other “intangibles” that are factored in when considering applicants.
To be even more fair, you don’t KNOW that your wife’s race helped her to get into college. It could have been her socioeconomics or gender or geography. It could have been all of these things plus her race. Or none of those things at all.
When I was a senior in high school, a few of my white classmates thought it would be hilarious to tease me about getting into “good” schools on Affirmative Action. I didn’t have high SATs and I wasn’t the valedictorian, so in their minds, the only way I could have gotten in was because of my race. But it was like they had forgotten that my grades were higher than theirs. My letters of recommendations were probably better than theirs. I had great extracurriculars and leadership experience. But I still believed them when they told me I was going to school on AA.
Fast forward to my first year in college. Three of the white guys I went to high school with were there. None of them had been National Merit Finalists. None of them had been valedictorians. I don’t think any of them were in National Honor Society (I was such a geek that I paid attention to those kinds of things). Yet, they were able to escape the kind of stigma placed on me simply because they had high SAT scores. (Weirdly, all of those guys dropped out. After my second year, I never saw them again.)
In the past, I’ve attributed my admission to my alma mater to Affirmative Action, but I don’t think it’s fair to myself to do that.
Does that extend to helping kids who show great potential despite horrible environments? Don’t these kids show more college promise that those who have performed admirally, but have had every advantage?
I say that there is no injustice at all with your kids benefiting from AA. The program helps open doors but that’s it. All the hard work that goes into getting a college education will still be waiting for them once they got in, so it’s not like they’d be getting handed a diploma for free just because of their race.
I personally, think AA is less about helping individuals as much as helping groups of individuals who historically have shut out of the American dream through no fault of their own. Sure, some people benefit from the program who don’t “deserve” an extra hand because they haven’t suffered in their lives, but that’s not injustice. That’s just how life works sometimes.
If the system by default favors those who come from privilege, then it behooves those who do not come from privilege to take advantage of all the opportunites available to them. For some people, these opportunities come from programs like AA. For others, opportunities come from knowing someone who knows someone who knows someone in a position of power. The latter is called networking and is something that the privileged excell at, while the less privileged do not due to historical circumstances that kept them out of the mix.
I think Affirmative Action should be eliminated in all forms. To me, it teaches people that all “men” are not created equal, that some need an upperhand because of how they look and people who are more qualified lose out on lots of great opportunities.
What would happen if Affirmative Action worked only for the sex of a person and not race? Now, imagine that it only applied to men and not women.
According to a piece on Sixty Minutes a few years ago, Harvard University was practicing AA for men in their admissions program. More women were qualifying for admission to Harvard than men, but the university was trying to keep the enrollment about even.
I’m sorry that I can’t provide a cite. Take it with a grain of salt anyway. Maybe someone can find stats on enrollment by gender for about four or five years ago.
This use of AA for men is certainly an exception. Generally men have not needed to make a point of their worthiness for consideration as regular human beings.
In his book The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution, [url=]Michael Lind makes a very good case that race-based affirmative action should be, not simply abolished, but replaced – with an even more vigorous (and, I would think, much more expensive) regime of color-blind, class-based affirmative action; what he describes as a “social escalator” for all lower-class and working-class Americans.
I would urge you to value this at more than 10%. By checking the Native American box, your kids will be visible on paper as well as in person for students from the reservation who are considering college and wondering whether or not they will be the only NA on campus. “Will I fit in here?” is a factor in the college selection process, and for many underrepresented groups, “I don’t want to be the only one” is an important issue.
I should add that I think AA needs some updating to address the very real concerns raised in this thread by the raindog and others. I do not, however, think that this is one of those situations where continued participation in the current system is holding back the reforms. Now that I think about it, over-participation might drive reforms faster than under-participation, because it keeps the issue hot. So by all means, have your kids check the box, go to college, get advanced degrees in public policy, and contribute to the process of evaluating and redesigning AA to better reflect the educational needs of 21st century students. That would make a good admisisons essay, btw, feel free to consider it for future use.
Um, no one shoud get “Affirmative Action”, AKA race based preference.
My girlfriend of 17 years is Cheyenne tribe and her distaste for her own people that sponge is more than palpable. Ask her about it sometime. She will tell you:
Get off the bottle, get off the res, get an ecucation, and get a job, you fucking loser. This is 2006, and you have no excuse.
Instead of feeling sorry for herself she moved to LA, partied her ass off, and made something of herself. This is why I love her.
She would tell anyone: GET A JOB AND STOP PLAYING DUMB INJUN. THAT SHIAT WENT OUT WITH F-TROOP.
And I would go farther that that. By placing people into curriculums that they are not qualified for, you are setting them up for failure. You know, I dropped out of a worthless High School (Kenwood “Academy” on the south side of Chicago) took the GED and was in college at age 16. It was a community college, but I recieved an excellent education that has served me to the day. I didn’t need AA, I didn’t need good grades in HS, but I had some of the best teachers avialable (many who taught classes of 100+ students at state, but taught us in groups of 25-30 at the CC) so quit your whining.