And again, I’ve already responded to this point in the previous thread. First of all, if you bothered to readthearticles that I linked to, you would know that affirmative action causes a large number of problems for blacks and for everyone. The fact that it mismatches black students with universities where they’re not academically prepared to compete is only one of those problems. Once again, you have failed to grasp this very basic point.
And again, there are studies that directly report on the impact of affirmative action. Those studies have found that affirmative action causes black students to be placed in more selective schools where they can’t compete, and thus drop out at greater rates. This has been confirmed when states such as California have banned racial preferences and seen the percentage of blacks graduating shoot upwards as a result. Since we know that affirmative action increases the dropout rates for blacks, there’s no need to rely on studies that have nothing to do with affirmative action. Once again, you have failed to grasp this very basic point.
Consider this analogy again. A certain type of drug, call it XYZ, is offered as a treatment for some disease. Someone claims that the drug is actually harmful because it causes internal bleeding. There are many studies which show that XYZ does cause internal bleeding and thereby harms patients. On the other hand, somebody on the internet says you should ignore those studies and instead focus on just one study which claims that internal bleeding is harmless while making no mention of XYZ. So who do you believe regarding the effects of XYZ: the many studies about XYZ, or the one study that has nothing to do with XYZ?
Obviously, unless you’re a total idiot, you’ll choose to believe the many studies about XYZ. A single study about internal bleeding broadly would tell you nothing specific about the internal bleeding caused by XYZ. Likewise a single study about mismatch in college placements tells us nothing about the specific instances of mismatch caused by affirmative action. This point is bleedingly obvious to everyone except yourself. That’s why in two threads trying to override the consensus of findings on affirmative action with this one study, you’ve failed to convince anyone.
Have you completely lost track of what we’re discussing here. Let’s go back to the beginning.
The people of Michigan passed a law which said that from now on, all races will be treated the same by state government. Sotomayor said “a majority of the Michigan electorate changed the basic rules of the political process in that State in a manner that uniquely disadvantaged racial minorities”. In other words, the Honorable Justice Sotomayor flatly lied about what the people of Michigan chose to do. She said that they voted to treat racial minorities worse than others, while in reality they voted to treat all racial groups exactly alike.
You, however, said this: “a more compelling case can be made for [Sotomayor’s] side than yours”. I challenged you to explain why you think that Sotomayor’s lie can be justified. So far you haven’t done so.
I don’t know why I even bother responding to your gibberish given you clearly live in the right-wing bubble. AA clearly results in more diversity wrt URM. That is its intent. Socioeconomic diversity is already dealt with using other policies. The idea that AA doesn’t increase diversity is just too stupid to even bother spending more time on.
This is easily takes the cake as one of your dumber comments, and that is saying A LOT.
The mismatch was the the PRIMARY issue you raised, and the only one which the study I linked to addresses. You can move the goalposts now if you want since you (hopefully) realize how dumb your objection is, but that doesn’t change the fact that the issue you keep bringing up is baseless. But feel free to point out reasons why AA is bad that do not involve mismatching.
Otherwise known as mismatching. The problem is not the observation of higher drop out rates, but the ascribing that to mismatching.
That is not the consensus findings. Do you work in academia? Do you have ANY background that would allow you to make such a claim? Because it’s funny to me that all of these PRIVATE colleges are so blinded by PC that they still use this policy that is CLEARY bad for the people it’s intended to help. Please tell me why all these smart academics are wrong? Why hasn’t common sense or market forces led them to change their policies? Could it be because they are not swayed by right wing hacks regardless of what half-assed studies they trot out?
I did this several times already. A process by which a sheer majority rules often tramples the rights of minorities because they don’t have the raw numbers to equally express themselves. The “same for everyone” is not actual fairness or equality. It’s just stupid, lazy thinking.
It doesn’t really matter if someone won’t be persuaded (to change their mind?), no matter what. What does matter is that the debate continues and readers will, hopefully, have a better understanding of what occurred and why. People can attempt to defend their position and add to the conversation and/or they can claim that they’re being harassed.
Personally, I’m not seeing any harassment, just reasonable debate.
I’m not sure where support for this idea comes from, particularly the last three sentences. I recognize it’s a common assertion, but the idea for example that diversity is “inherently good for learning” seems to me a hollow assertion.
What diversity does–when, by “diversity” we mean “blacks and hispanics”–is give blacks and hispanics an opportunity to get a higher education. Period. As I posted earlier, the problem with having opportunity-based admission policies is that at every opportunity tier, blacks and hispanics will still be at the lowest performance level for that opportunity tier. If you go into a high school in a wealthy community, the lowest performing group by SIRE (self-identified race/ethnicity) will be blacks and hispanics. If you go into a ghetto school, the highest performing group will be asians and the lowest will be blacks. “Diversity” is slang for “blacks and hispanics” and not a word meaning background or personal experience.
Without race-based AA, blacks and hispanics (as a group average) cannot compete academically. Period. I’m not sure getting the black doctor’s kid admitted promotes “diversity” of experience but it sure as hell promotes getting a black kid into higher education.
Race-based “diversity” extends to those two groups the chance to get a higher education.
It’s as simple as that, and we need to create ways to make sure that blacks and hispanics continue to have opportunity in higher education or we will ultimately lose the black and hispanic middle class and revert to what we had before race-based AA.
We’ve found ways to get women into firefighting by recognizing that the same criteria need not apply to them. We can find ways to get blacks and hispanics into higher education by giving them their own performance metrics.
What do you mean they cannot “compete academically”? Do you believe they are biologically inferior with regards to academic work? Do you really believe that a child of a black doctor is worse off with regards to college chances than a child of a poor white family?
Or we can support economic policies that benefit the entire working-class/lower middle-class including blacks and Hispanics. In the meantime the party which supports such policies will be strengthened without racially divisive affirmative action with which the other party uses as a wedge issue to win the white working-class/lower middle-class vote.
So in other words, a double standard?
I’m glad the Supreme Court upheld this law, although they ought to have gone further and rejected race completely as a criteria for colleges that receive any sort of public funding/support. Ideally, the same should be done with regards to admissions on the basis of being the children of alumni or athletics.
You do not want to go there. Are you really unaware of the pages and pages of threads devoted to that topic? Threads which a handful of posters here, including the one you responded to, will go on and on with their race realism ideas?
Conservatives used the opportunity of the gutted Voting Rights Act to immediately create racist voter ID laws, it will be the same here. They used a very innocent sounding scheme just like you did with your example. For voting, the said simply shortening times or giving more time to military absentee voters isn’t racist, which on the surface it seems so. But it is for reasons already discussed. So will conservatives try it with this issue by creating a bunch of standards that seem race neutral but end up targeting minorities
Your two sentences are not mutually exclusive :rolleyes:
I do NOT want to sidetrack my own thread into a discussion of whether or not there are average biological differences among SIRE groups, although in the interest of full disclosure, John Mace is correct that I hold such a position. You can read those other threads to decide for yourself whether the problem is biological or social.
I can give you some facts around your question for the “black doctor’s child” and I can confirm that I think only a “double standard” will enable penetration of blacks into roles which require higher academic achievement, particularly with respect to fields such as the STEM ones, along with medicine, law, and any employer requiring a quantified screening examination as an entry point for hiring.
The first fact is this: even given equal socioeconomic opportunity, as a group blacks substantially underperform whites and asians on quantified exams such as the ACT or SAT, entry exams for law and medicine, or (in the case of medicine, which is my field) higher qualification exams such as a certification exam for a specialty field of medicine.
It is utterly irrelevant from the standpoint of race-based AA if this is an average biological problem or an average hidden socioeconomic/political/cultural history/parental incompetence/racism problem. What we can say is that it is an intractable problem
What stares those of us in academia in the face (I sat for many years on a medical school admissions committee) is a simple fact: As a group–a broad average–blacks underscore whites (who underscore asians) on every quantified measure even when one corrects for socioeconomic background. This SES includes family income, neighborhood, opportunity, parental education and every other typically advanced reason for lower scores as a group.
Similarly, if I were a tech employer who established a screening exam for employees, or a firefighter chief who established a screening exam for advancement, what I would find is that, as a self-associated group, blacks always score in the lowest tier.
This means that, in practice, there must be what you term a “double standard” if we want to drive “diversity” into any roles that require all candidates to take the same screening quantifiable exams.
Refusal to accept this basic premise means bad social policy, and the current SCOTUS ruling is an example of bad social policy by Michigan voters being supported because the default assumption is false. This default assumption is that if we measure opportunity as well as we are able to measure it, and then put applicants into buckets which reflect a grouping of that opportunity, every SIRE group will do about the same.
There is not a shred of evidence that every SIRE group will do the same. None. Anywhere.
So if we want diversity which includes our black population (and I for one do) then yes, we have to have one standard for achievement and hiring if you are black, and a second standard if you are not black, and set aside for blacks some number of positions.
That is the reality which stares every institution of higher education in the face on their admissions processes. It’s the reality which triggers cases like Ricci v DeStefano.
It matters not if it’s a biological reality or a social reality. What matters is that only race-based AA will provide a remedy for under representation of blacks roles which require quantifiable screening exams.
For this reason, every state and SCOTUS decision that undermines race-based AA is a step in the wrong direction for a society where every child has a chance to participate at every level.
Should read,
“This disparity is profound and stubbornly resistant to all efforts in higher academia to eliminate it. An example that I cite frequently is found in a large study of SAT scores reported in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education: Black children from wealthy (income >80-100K/yr) families substantially underscore white children from poverty stricken (income <10K/yr) families on the SAT.”
My apologies. Here is the fuller quote so I stop blundering trying to distill it:
*"But there is a major flaw in the thesis that income differences explain the racial gap. Consider these three observable facts from The College Board’s 2005 data on the SAT:
• Whites from families with incomes of less than $10,000 had a mean SAT score of 993. This is 129 points higher than the national mean for all blacks.
• Whites from families with incomes below $10,000 had a mean SAT test score that was 61 points higher than blacks whose families had incomes of between $80,000 and $100,000.
• Blacks from families with incomes of more than $100,000 had a mean SAT score that was 85 points below the mean score for whites from all income levels, 139 points below the mean score of whites from families at the same income level, and 10 points below the average score of white students from families whose income was less than $10,000."*
That’s a crock of shit. If you’re giving a rich black student a spot over a poor white student despite the poor white student being a better student with better test scores, you are denying that student the chance to participate that they worked hard to obtain. A black student can overcome the barrier of entry requirements by working harder and becoming a high scoring student; a white student cannot overcome the barrier of racist discrimination by becoming black.
I find the argument that blacks are too lazy to become academically accomplished rather distasteful.
I would have loved to have become a professional golfer, but I don’t think any amount of effort on my part would have overcome the barrier of entry requirements. And I’m almost positive advanced calculus was not open to my level of ability either.
I don’t think I’ve attended or worked at a single school that cared all *that *much about test scores. Maybe other schools rack-and-stack based on some formula, but I’ve never really seen college admission as something anyone deserves more based on SAT performance.
Chief Pedant, you said it’s impossible to get the (racial) diversity that schools want without accounting for race, but I wonder about the creative contortions that have been attempted, including geographical diversity with some appropriate level of granularity. Or some accounting for life experiences, which sounds like a nightmare to implement.
But I admit I, too, would have loved to be a professional golfer. Unfortunately, my best scratch score ever was an 85, and that’s the only time I ever broke 90.
So: can I ask society to pass some laws to give me a fair chance to compete on the PGA?
Nitpick: nobody “works hard” to obtain better SAT scores. The SAT is essentially an IQ test. You can bump yourself up by maybe 30 points by “studying” for it, but basically the only way to improve your SAT score is to have run out screaming five minutes into the first test and having nowhere to go but up.
Sure, just as soon as competitiveness on the PGA is seen as a societal good.
All first generation college student have a higher dropout rate. This is due not to academic ability, but mostly to financial considerations. Another major cause is family obligations back home. Finally, first generation students have less guidance on navigating what is usually a complex system. Things like registering for classes, accessing student services, dealing with financial aid, figuring out you degree requirements are not intuitive, and it helps to have a parent or older sibling or friend who know how it all works.
This is all well documented. Universities have a huge stake in cutting drop out rates, so they pay attention to this stuff.
Universities are starting to fix these issues. States are open ending more universities in under served areas (like UC Merced) so the poor don’t have to travel as far from their families. Universities are starting to recognize that first generation students have different needs for counseling (just like older students and transfer students) and offering services tailored towards their specific needs.
For sports I think so, if you just want to use that as a parallel.
I think we could look at the NBA and say, “Hey; you guys need to set aside more spots for asians. Thanks.” And then legislate that number of set-asides for that SIRE group.
But the NBA is such a small number of jobs, we aren’t interested in doing that.