In this Elections thread about the possibility of Hillary Clinton tapping Julian Castro as her running mate, the following exchange came up (posts have been excerpted and cut apart, and the segments’ order arranged, to clarify who is responding to whom/what; but no words in any post have been changed or interpolated, except within square brackets, and those used only in one of in my own posts):
BobLibDem is entirely right here. Look, we could and should be living in a society where people of all ethnicities start The Great Meritocracy Race at the same line, but we’re not living in it now. American society has by no means gotten past conscious malicious racism. And there are important forms of racism that can hold nonwhites back even when decision-makers are not burdened even with unconscious racism – e.g., the “systemic racism” resulting from the fact that upper-class and upper-middle-class whites know mostly each other and have social old-boy networks that blacks have never gotten to join. That naturally puts the white candidates first in line to get into the best schools, jobs, contracts, etc., regardless of whether the usually-white people doing the admitting or hiring or contracting have any actual prejudice against minorities. AA is necessary just to level the field, not to give a leg up to the congenitally incompetent.
Your argument is that affirmative action is necessary because all white people know each other and use those contacts to get into the best schools? In the specific case of Stanford, how many of the applicants do the acceptance people know? My guess is practically no one. They judge the applicants by test scores, GPAs, and the application. How does access to old boy networks get you a good SAT score or the ability to write a good application essay? It is conceivable that teachers are discriminating against black and latino students and for white and asian students but I doubt it.
A degree from Stanford means two things: You were a good enough student to get into Stanford and 2. you were a good enough student to graduate. Since grade inflation means that 95% of Stanford students graduate, that leaves 1 to do most of the signaling. Since different races are held to different admission standards, an asian person with a Stanford degree should mean more than a white person with a Stanford degree, which should mean more than a hispanic or black person with a Stanford degree.
There is no external, objective measure of “qualified” vs “unqualified” for Stanford admission. They are the sole arbiter of who they want to admit. If they admit a student, that student is qualified by definition.
As for puddleglum’s point #2, I did my graduate work at Stanford and can attest to the unbelievable grade inflation there. If a student received an A-. you’d think he had gotten an F. Still, that has nothing to do with AA. (And don’t even get me started on what a farce their “honor system” is!)
Well, when you’ve seen very bright white guys get denied admission to an Ivy League school and a less-bright African-American guy magically get accepted, one has to question if the reverse discrimination of AA is worth it.
For the person of insert oppressed minority here, I’m sure it is. But I’m not convinced that amplifying our racial/gender/sexual differences does much to heal our wounds.
In other words, if you are a proponent of Affirmative Action, that’s fine. But don’t pretend it represents the Meritocracy that we all idealize for this country. It was always meant to be a temporary means to an end: equality of opportunity. When we have reached that point, the usefulness of reverse discrimination begins to diminish rapidly.
Second this. The public cases I’ve seen are of good, but not particularly bright, much less very bright, white students incensed that they got rejected in favor of someone who was likely also a good (but minority) student.
There were a couple of white guys who I attended HS with, who ended up joining me in college. They were mediocre students in HS (at least relative to my above-average performance) but for some reason that didn’t stop us from all being accepted to the same selective institution. Which is fine. Merit can be measured in multiple ways. I’m guessing they were admitted based on the SAT’s. I was admitted based on my grades. The fact that I was a black female (a double minority in an engineering school) no doubt also helped me out.
It didn’t surprise me that both of those “super bright” white guys ended up dropping out. One of them had a 1.5 GPA after the first quarter. I have no idea what they’re up to now. But it also wouldn’t surprise me if they’re doing well for themselves–likely better than I am–even though I graduated with honors . Turns out that merit doesn’t matter in the long run. Who you know and all the other stuff associated with “who you know” matters a whole lot more than grades. (And I’m guessing that one of those guys, based on how cruelly he used to tease me about being an “AA baby”, still thinks he made it all on his own hard work and “merit”.)
Since college professors don’t give special dumbed-down exams to AA beneficiaries, it’s ludicrous to label them “unqualified” once they possess the degree. An AA beneficiary who DOESN’T flunk out, who manages to succeed despite the small advantage they received, challenges the meaningfulness of “merit.” This frightens people who have a lot invested in the myth that this is a fair-world meritocracy.
I just want to address this point here. The idea that the ideal for the United States is a true meritocracy is a fallacy. In any meritocracy - I work in a strong one - one inevitably ends up with both winners, a whole bunch of people in the middle, and losers.
To extend the concept of meritocracy to an entire society is to essentially extend the gilded age to the present when we’ve spent more than a century trying to eliminate that. We don’t - I hope - want people starving in poor houses unable to find work that will provide for basic necessities. Instead we’ve opted for a system when there are supports for those in need - welfare, unemployment and yes, affirmative action as well as others - to assist them in overcoming whatever obstacles they face in the pursuit of basic living.
This should be contrasted with the support and such that those better off have. Tax breaks, special conditions and so forth. There are very few homeowners that don’t take advantage of the mortgage interest deduction or the pre-tax retirement contribution deduction. Each of those is as specific a support as any welfare check.
Also of this indicates that the United States is not intended in any way to be a meritocracy and to pretend it is allows the narrative to be distorted in a way that prevents solutions to problems.
Bright white guys don’t get accepted to Ivy League schools and other white guys get in. Some with slightly smaller GPAs (although honestly, no one is getting in with much less than a 4.0) or slightly lower test scores (although, again, you are still in the 99th percentile) - even if you are a black homeless disabled lesbian woman from a small town in North Dakota.
These schools take 10% of their applicants. Most of their applicants are very bright people. They have to pick and choose. Sometimes white guys get turned down for other white guys. Sometimes white guys get turned down for Asian Lesbian women.
If you can find examples of students getting into these very competitive colleges with 3.2 GPAs and 28 ACT scores, I’d love to hear about them.
All this right here. It’s telling that SAT scores and other pre-admission indicators are where the focus in these discussions is placed, and not on a student’s performance in the very institutions for which these indicators supposedly have predictive value. Its an ass-backwards perspective that makes it difficult to take the anti-AA side seriously.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Castro graduated at the top of his class. Why do I say this? Because most talented people who are confident in their abilities are secure enough to admit when they’ve benefited from outside factors like AA, alumni parents, powerful connections, and luck. It is typically those who are insecure in their ability to successfully compete on their own power who are wedded to the delusion that our society is a meritocracy.
If legacies take place unchallenged because of societal practicalities, there is absolutely no problem with affirmative action. Anyone arguing otherwise is likely in favor of a tribe they identify with retaining a disproportionate share of influence or ingratiating themselves to that group.
Hereis a study on the effects of Affirmative Action from Duke which is a highly competitive school. It does not list GPA’s of incoming freshmen but it does list SAT scores. The average Asian has an SAT score in the 98 percentile, the average White has one in the 96th percentile, the average Hispanic has one in the 94th percentile and the average Black has one in the 89th percentile. The 89th percentile for the ACT is almost 28. So half the black admissions to Duke had a test score equivalent to less than 28.
Maybe there aren’t dumbed-down exams, but there are still ways to manipulate GPAs, at least in grad school. One example I personally saw in grad school was black student on a minority scholarship who received D’s in senior level undergraduate classes (which counted for grad school). You had to maintain a 3.0 as a grad student and couldn’t go more than a semester (maybe two, I can’t recall) with a below 3.0 GPA without being put on academic probation and then dismissed if no improvement.
This student was given a 6 credit “Special Research Project” which was basically the literature review for his thesis, something he had to write anyway. His adviser graded it and gave him an A to boost his GPA.
No, it really does exist to some extent, and a far greater extent than it did 50 years ago – but, to that extent, its value, in terms of producing competent and trustworthy leaders and decision-makers, is grossly overrated. Check out Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy, by Christopher Hayes.