# Is Affirmative Action focused on the wrong things?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [April 5, 2017, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792 "2017-04-05T02:21:14Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792/81 "2017-04-06T13:19:27Z")
> [@msmith537](#):
>
> I think it should be based on smarts and aptitude, rather than who can tell the best hard luck story.
It’s not about the hard luck story, it’s about what you do with it.
I mean, let’s say you have a kid who goes to a piece of shit school in the middle of nowhere, where the math doesn’t go past Alg 2 and the school average SAT is south of 850. That kid finished all the math available to him by the end of sophomore year, and did pre-cal and calculus on-line with no one to help him and got a 4 on AB calculus. He gets a 720 on the SAT math section. Now, top schools could literally fill their rosters with kids who got a perfect math score and a 5 on the BC calc exam–for talented kids with a good math background and a little prep, it’s not that hard–but that country kid that self-studied to a 720 and taught himself calculus pretty well may well have a lot more smarts and aptitude (and other things, as well). But how can admissions people see that context without essays and recommendations explaining it?
Also, hard luck stories don’t get you into highly selective programs. Doing something amazing gets you into highly selective programs. So I have a little girl going to a program that it better than her grades and test scores suggested she’d get into, and a really, really superficial survey of her app would say “wow, they let her in because her dad died.” **But there’s tons of kids lose their dad in high school.** What made her different is that after her dad died, she started working 30 hours a week, took over a big chunk of the childcare and housekeeping (there are 3 babies at home) and kept her grades up in 6 AP classes–passed all the exams–and stayed involved in campus life. That was an extraordinary feat that almost no one would have been capable of, and a kid who can do that is going to make the absolute most of whatever opportunities a college can offer. How is it unfair for a school to recognize that?
Other kids have “hard luck stories” and they don’t particularly rise to the occasion, and they don’t have any particular advantage in admissions. I’ve seen kids send in essays (over my advice) that were nothing but “it was hell growing up watching my dad beat my mom and no one else has suffered like me” and they don’t have an edge. You take the country kid who self-taught himself calculus over that kid.
And kids without “hard luck stores” can still do incredible things. They have to actually figure out the incredible thing–they have to be inspired–but they can do it. If my little girl could find 30 hours/week to spend frying chicken because the family needed money and not let it impact her grades, the kid who has a solid family and secure resources can find 20 hours a week to develop a videogame, or complete original research, or write a novel or master AME math or whatever. The only “disadvantage” is that no one is making him chose to do those things in the way that the urgent necessity of taking care of your family drives others.
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### Author:  [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792/82 "2017-04-06T16:49:00Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#):
>
> Like I said, I am perfectly happy to have AA for the descendants of slaves and American indians. hell you can have reasonable quotas if you want; but we should not be applying AA to the children of African immigrants.
Does this include white descendants of slaves and indians?
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### Author:  [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792/83 "2017-04-06T17:15:27Z")
> [@Fiveyearlurker](#):
>
> I started [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=386138) ten years ago (gasp!) about whether I should allow my, at the time, non-existent children benefit from affirmative action despite the fact that they will grow up economically advantaged.
>
> My kids are now real live people (three of them. I did not see that coming when I started that thread!), and I’ve decided that I have no problem with them benefiting from affirmative action. I’m not going to lie, some of it is pure selfishness. But I also think they could do some good as examples to other American Indian kids, regardless of their upbringing.
Affirmative action isn’t necessarily about bringing the historically disadvantaged group up to the mean.
So lets say in an alternate universe where things had gone differently with American Indians the average income of American Indians is 80% of the national average because there is still some discrimination. But there is relatively proportional representation across socioeconomic classes and professions. In order to get to this hypothetical world, we wouldn’t stop the affirmative action when any American Indian achieved middle class. The advantage of affirmative action (if done properly) should provide an advantage that would get them to the hypothetical situation they would be in without the centuries of genocide and that might mean continuing a preference for some fairly wealthy American Indians because presumably there would have been some very wealthy American Indian families under the hypothetical situation.
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### Author:  [@Belowjob2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Belowjob2.0)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792/84 "2017-04-06T17:31:57Z")
Aff Act is going away, basically as soon as President Pence is able to appoint another right wing justice in addition to Gorsuch. Chief Justice Roberts has already attacked Aff Act; he just needs a majority of like-minded justices, which he will get sooner than later.
Now, as to the specific issue of high scoring African students getting into the Ivie’s, this will probably continue even after formal Aff Act policies are banned. Why? Because the grades and test scores of high achieving African students will be close enough to those of the rest of the student body to make it difficult to prove racial discrimination.
The smart fraction of the African upper classes, especially the Igbos of Nigeria, are really smart.
> **[The IQ Gap is No Longer a Black and White Issue](https://www.unz.com/article/the-iq-gap-is-no-longer-a-black-and-white-issue/)**
>
> “If only environmental factors were responsible for the different IQs of different populations, we should expect to find some countries where Africans had higher IQs than Europeans. The failure to find a single country where this is the case points...
> [@](#):
>
> some African nationalities, particularly Ghanaians and Nigerians, score way above the England mean (and the white British mean), while others, like the Somalis and Congolese, score way below (but still not as low as the Portuguese immigrants, apparently). The low scoring African groups are the ones that migrated as refugees and/or could not speak English, besides being very poor. Improvements among the Somalians have been impressive, especially due to programs dedicated to teaching them English.
>
> Although the Chinese and Indians are still very conspicuously above even the best African nationalities, their superiority disappears when the Nigerian and other groups are broken down even further according to their different tribal ethnicities. Groups like the famous Igbo tribe, which has contributed much genetically to the African American blacks, are well known to be high academic achievers within Nigeria. In fact, their performance seems to be at least as high as the “model minority” Chinese and Indians in the UK, as seen when some recent African immigrants are divided into languages spoken at home (which also indicates that these are not multigenerational descendants but children of recent immigrants).
> Africans speaking Luganda and Krio did better than the Chinese students in 2011. The igbo were even more impressive given their much bigger numbers (and their consistently high performance over the years, gaining a 100 percent pass rate in 2009!). The superior Igbo achievement on GCSEs is not new and has been noted in studies that came before the recent media discovery of African performance. A 2007 report on “case study” model schools in Lambeth also included a rare disclosure of specified Igbo performance (recorded as Ibo in the table below) and it confirms that Igbos have been performing exceptionally well for a long time (5 + A\*-C GCSEs); in fact, it is difficult to find a time when they ever performed below British whites.
[ ](https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Chisala-9.png)
[ ](https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Chisala-8.png)
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### Author:  [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792/85 "2017-04-06T17:32:33Z")
> [@monstro](#):
>
> My take is that you’re making a mountain out of a molehill. I don’t think African immigrants are taking anything from the descendants of American slaves. Nor do I think black people who benefit from AA are taking anything from white people or anyone else for that matter.
What if I told you that 40% of black students in the ivy league are Africans or the children of Africans?
To be honest, this percentage sounds low to me, perhaps things have changed but when I was in school there seemed to be two immigrant blacks (or their children) for every native born black. The native born blacks were a minority within a minority.
I think that African immigrants are absolutely taking something from the descendants of slaves. I don’t know if these spots would be replaced one for one with the descendants of slaves but its not zero either. And there is little to justify giving an advantage to the children of recent African immigrants.
I think that affirmative action absolutely diminishes the prospects of others who are not beneficiaries of affirmative action. However, for the time being, I think that it is justified but the leakage of the benefit to black immigrants really undermines the argument for affirmative action in my mind.
Its not like we can’t figure out who is a descendant of a slave. Georgetown University recently offered preferential treatment to the descendants of its former slaves. They didn’t seem to have too much trouble figuring out who qualified for this preferential treatment.
> [@](#):
>
> What is your take on the article I posted?
I can believe that the toxic culture that black children grow up in combined with the toxicity of racism in this country can kill ambition and drive in almost anyone.
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### Author:  [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792/86 "2017-04-06T17:34:40Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> If you mean why do they get some help too (and in the assumption they don’t need it, which I don’t necessarily share), then it’s probably because they’re a relatively small group and trying to write an exception for them into the rules would cause more harm than good.
This “relatively small group” accounts for 40% of blacks in the Ivy League. My experience back in the 80’s was that it was higher than that but with Caribbeans.
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### Author:  [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792/87 "2017-04-06T17:34:56Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#):
>
> Affirmative action isn’t necessarily about bringing the historically disadvantaged group up to the mean.
>
> So lets say in an alternate universe where things had gone differently with American Indians the average income of American Indians is 80% of the national average because there is still some discrimination. But there is relatively proportional representation across socioeconomic classes and professions. In order to get to this hypothetical world, we wouldn’t stop the affirmative action when any American Indian achieved middle class. The advantage of affirmative action (if done properly) should provide an advantage that would get them to the hypothetical situation they would be in without the centuries of genocide and that might mean continuing a preference for some fairly wealthy American Indians because presumably there would have been some very wealthy American Indian families under the hypothetical situation.
How do we determine what the incomes of certain groups would be in an alternate history?
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792/88 "2017-04-06T17:44:00Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#):
>
> This “relatively small group” accounts for 40% of blacks in the Ivy League. My experience back in the 80’s was that it was higher than that but with Caribbeans.
Ivy League is tiny compared to education at large – I’m much more concerned about large universities and large companies, which affect far more people. Any stats for those?
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### Author:  [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792/89 "2017-04-06T17:44:12Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> That doesn’t necessarily alter my point, unless you think that refugees that make it (or are selected) to schools in the US are entirely “average”. It’s very possible that they’re also, to some degree, the “cream of the crop”.
How does the fact that they are refugees not alter your point? There is a huge difference in the self selection of foreign exchange and international students (or even economically motivated immigrants) and a refugee population. Not everyone is going to be motivated to leave their country and go start life as a stranger in a strange land. Pretty much everyone is motivated to flee Boko Haram.
You can see the difference when you look at the difference between Korean immigrants who are mostly economically driven immigrants and Vietnamese immigrants who are mostly refugees from the Vietnam war. Both are from Confucian cultures that value education and all that jazz but the Korean immigrants do better on average because there was more voluntary self selection rather than fleeing the Viet Cong to avoid killed. Lets say that we lost the Korean war and all the Koreans in America were descendants of refugees from that war, I suspect that the socioeconomic profile of Koreans would more closely mimic Vietnamese than what we see today.
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### Author:  [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792/90 "2017-04-06T17:46:54Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> The history of treatment of Asians and Jews in the US (which of course includes lots of terrible stuff) is very different than the treatment of people coming from Africa.
How so? If we are talking about African immigrants who came here in the last 20 or 30 years, how is their experience so different from the experience of recent Asian immigrants that the Nigerian immigrant should get AA and the Asian one should not?
> [@](#):
>
> It’s possible, and could fit my “cream of the crop” hypothesis.
Culture is not a cream of the crop scenario. Culture has to do with environment rather than raw material.
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792/91 "2017-04-06T17:51:59Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#):
>
> How does the fact that they are refugees not alter your point? There is a huge difference in the self selection of foreign exchange and international students (or even economically motivated immigrants) and a refugee population. Not everyone is going to be motivated to leave their country and go start life as a stranger in a strange land. Pretty much everyone is motivated to flee Boko Haram.
>
> You can see the difference when you look at the difference between Korean immigrants who are mostly economically driven immigrants and Vietnamese immigrants who are mostly refugees from the Vietnam war. Both are from Confucian cultures that value education and all that jazz but the Korean immigrants do better on average because there was more voluntary self selection rather than fleeing the Viet Cong to avoid killed. Lets say that we lost the Korean war and all the Koreans in America were descendants of refugees from that war, I suspect that the socioeconomic profile of Koreans would more closely mimic Vietnamese than what we see today.
Refugees who successfully make it out of a hellhole, and through all the bureaucracy, and into another country, are not necessarily the “average” refugees (or average citizens), whatever the differences between Vietnamese and Korean Americans (which you have not provided any cites for, not that it matters).
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#):
>
> How so? If we are talking about African immigrants who came here in the last 20 or 30 years, how is their experience so different from the experience of recent Asian immigrants that the Nigerian immigrant should get AA and the Asian one should not?
Because they are seen as black by most Americans, and therefore treated as black by most Americans. AA has nothing to do with blood (or it should have nothing to do with blood), and is all about how one is treated by society.
> [@](#):
>
> Culture is not a cream of the crop scenario. Culture has to do with environment rather than raw material.
Where did I say anything about “raw material”? Someone with high motivations and learning ability may have them because of great genes, or great parenting, or a good culture of education, or the luck of having a great teacher early on, or a variety of other reasons.
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### Author:  [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792/92 "2017-04-06T17:52:23Z")
> [@msmith537](#):
>
> I think it should be based on smarts and aptitude, rather than who can tell the best hard luck story.
The ability to write a compellingly is in itself a useful measure of aptitude.
If I was a college and I had to bet on the future success of children coming out of high school. I would bet on a child that was able to overcome significant adversity to get a 4.0 GPA and 1400 SAT over a child that was given every advantage and managed a 4.2 and a 1450 SAT (these are not small academic differences).
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### Author:  [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792/93 "2017-04-06T18:10:41Z")
> [@puddleglum](#):
>
> Does this include white descendants of slaves and indians?
That is a tough question. What percentage of your ancestors have to be slaves for AA to apply?
I would say that if 1/4 of your ancestry lived in America during segregation and would have been considered black by Bull Connor when MLK was shot, you should qualify.
For American Indians, I would say that if at least 2 great grandparents lived on a reservation at some point in their lives or if you are 1/4 American Indian, then you should qualify.
These cutoffs are entirely subjective and arbitrary. YMMV.
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### Author:  [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792/94 "2017-04-06T18:14:25Z")
> [@puddleglum](#):
>
> How do we determine what the incomes of certain groups would be in an alternate history?
We can’t but I don’t think you can reasonably argue that we are anywhere close to that right now.
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### Author:  [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792/95 "2017-04-06T18:23:32Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> Ivy League is tiny compared to education at large – I’m much more concerned about large universities and large companies, which affect far more people. Any stats for those?
I don’t know that anyone keeps track of these subgroups within the black student population outside of top colleges and universities. Do you suspect that AA helps native blacks more at less competitive schools than it does at top schools.
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792/96 "2017-04-06T18:28:22Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#):
>
> I don’t know that anyone keeps track of these subgroups within the black student population outside of top colleges and universities. Do you suspect that AA helps native blacks more at less competitive schools than it does at top schools.
I don’t know… but it sounds like it still helps non-immigrant black people quite a bit at the Ivy Leagues, even if not quite as much as it helps African immigrants (or else African immigrants are just that awesome). ISTM AA greatly helps non-immigrant African Americans (in that some measure of equalizing opportunity is greatly helpful to this group), and that it might also greatly help African immigrants doesn’t strike me as a particularly bad thing.
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### Author:  [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792/97 "2017-04-06T19:03:31Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#):
>
> How so? If we are talking about African immigrants who came here in the last 20 or 30 years, how is their experience so different from the experience of recent Asian immigrants that the Nigerian immigrant should get AA and the Asian one should not?
Yes. The corrosive impact of racism and implicit bias hits them very hard. Affirmative action isn’t apologizing to a bloodline.
I mean, by your logic, would a black African American child adopted by African immigrants be entitled or not?
True story, I have a student this year who is half Nigerian, half African American. He did get into a couple Ivys, MIT and Stanford. Is that just or unjust? Does it matter which parent it was, which last name he carries?
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### Author:  [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792/98 "2017-04-06T19:14:08Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> Refugees who successfully make it out of a hellhole, and through all the bureaucracy, and into another country, are not necessarily the “average” refugees (or average citizens), whatever the differences between Vietnamese and Korean Americans (which you have not provided any cites for, not that it matters).
I’m not sure what you are talking about. Vietnamese refugees weren’t admitted into the US based on their ability to navigate some refugee bureaucracy.
> [@](#):
>
> Because they are seen as black by most Americans, and therefore treated as black by most Americans. AA has nothing to do with blood (or it should have nothing to do with blood), and is all about how one is treated by society.
So you are saying that if we never had slavery or segregation, we would still need to have AA because we’re that fucking racist?
> [@](#):
>
> Where did I say anything about “raw material”? Someone with high motivations and learning ability may have them because of great genes, or great parenting, or a good culture of education, or the luck of having a great teacher early on, or a variety of other reasons.
So cream of the crop might include nature AND nurture? Then, I don’t think I understand what you mean by cream of the crop unless you just mean people who do well for whatever reason, in which case, I’m not sure what useful role that term plays in the discussion.
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### Author:  [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792/99 "2017-04-06T19:18:36Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> I don’t know… but it sounds like it still helps non-immigrant black people quite a bit at the Ivy Leagues, even if not quite as much as it helps African immigrants (or else African immigrants are just that awesome). ISTM AA greatly helps non-immigrant African Americans (in that some measure of equalizing opportunity is greatly helpful to this group), and that it might also greatly help African immigrants doesn’t strike me as a particularly bad thing.
Helping African immigrants based solely on he color of their skin is a very bad thing and unless you can identify a fairly significant good thing to justify this race based preference we ought to get rid of it.
AA for the descendants of American slaves is one thing. AA for the wealthy/middle class children of African immigrants is really quite another.
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### Author:  [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2017, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-affirmative-action-focused-on-the-wrong-things/783792/100 "2017-04-06T19:22:35Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#):
>
> Helping African immigrants based solely on he color of their skin is a very bad thing and unless you can identify a fairly significant good thing to justify this race based preference we ought to get rid of it.
>
> AA for the descendants of American slaves is one thing. AA for the wealthy/middle class children of African immigrants is really quite another.
You keep saying this like it’s an article of faith. But for my money, having diversity goals in college admissions isn’t about trying to pay reparations to the genetic linage of those affected by slavery. It’s to offset the current racist society. Lots of us are saying this, and you keep hand-waving it away with “society just isn’t that racist anymore”. But it is. A large part of the reason it is is that the justifications and rationalizations for slavery and Jim Crow have lingered, but those prejudices hit everyone that society identifies as “black”, not just people who carry the genes of former slaves.
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