Because even though a general equality has often been seen as a societal good, all the efforts everywhere by everybody in every setting across every cultural boundary and every historical period have failed to produce racial diversity since they are all based on an erroneous assumption of genetic homegeneity?
IOW, because genes are the reason racial disparities persist with a spectacularly stubborn sameness of non-diverse outcomes for the same skillsets?
(Just a (politically and socially non-startable) thought…)
School vouchers can increase race-based diversity temporarily, but black kids educated in those private schools still need a race-based preference for acceptance to the next level (college), and again a race-based preference for acceptance to the next level (graduate school).
Scores, grades, or any quantifiable standards have never been equalized anywhere, in any setting across large enough race groups, despite equivalent opportunity. This is the whole battle U Texas is facing with Fisher. They can’t get the better black students because those students all come from wealthier and more educated black families, and while their scores are better than the 10% of automatically admitted black students from black schools, they are woefully below whites and asians in their SES peer groups.
We need race-based preferences, not simply an equalization of SES status or educational opportunity. Well over 75% of black kids in IVY leagues are from middle class families, and they are there because of race-based admission preferences–not because their qualifications would otherwise get them admitted. Without those race-based preferences, the black middle class who have done well will have their children slip back a notch from the level the parents attained.
Good to see you, Chief. Anecdotally, I was about the best test-taker in my school. Unfortunately, I joined the Navy at age 17 to get away from an untenable home environment. I sometimes wonder how I’d be now if I had stuck it out and gone on to college.
Speaking of children slipping back a notch, we’re having an issue currently here in Oklahoma. The state legislature has mandated end-of-schoolyear testing in reading ability (perhaps mathematics as well). If the kids don’t pass, they have to repeat the grade (or take a lot of classes to get them up to speed over the summer.) The test results were in just this last week. 1/3 of Tulsa third-graders are reading at only a first-grade level! :eek: 3,000 kids. Results are similar across the state. Imagine having that number of children repeating a grade. It would be undo-able based on class size alone. I can’t imagine what the cause of something this extensive could be. Speculation is that the legislature is going to de-fang the law and not require the repeating of the grade next year due to failing these tests.
In the news stories on this issue, it was good to see kids of many races in the classes. I imagine if I were a third-grader in this mess, it might be nice to look around and think : “well, it’s not just kids like me who have messed up.”
Racial diversity is not important. Racial INCLUSIVENESS is what’s importance. Our society needs qualities like intelligence, strength, persistence, willingness to work hard, etc. and it doesn’t matter a whit whether those qualities come in packages that are white, brown, yellow, red, black, male, female, gay, straight, whatever. A society that fails to use people with those qualities because they come in those packages is a weak society. Saudi Arabia, for example, is a weak society because it does not take advantage of those qualities when they come in female packages. Saudi Arabia will eventually have to change or be taken over by other, stronger cultures … it’s just a matter of time.
So racial inclusiveness is something we need for our own benefit, not out of some abstract principle of fairness. Encouraging racial diversity may be a means to that end, but it’s not the end goal.
The news stories and accompanying photographs are not always the best way to determine the actual statistics.
In Slide 12 here froma presentation explaining the Tulsa problem, showing NAEP data from 2009, you’ll see that moderate and high-income fourth-grade black students (and about the same percentage of hispanics) score below basic on the reading ability exam, versus 17% of whites and 14% of asians for the same income grouping. (58% v 38% for low income blacks/whites) That pattern is stubbornly persistent everywhere; in every state and every city.
This is why race-based preferences are so important to help drive diversity. You cannot look around and think “well it’s not just kids like me.” In point of fact, without race-based considerations that is exactly what would happen, in the same way that a black NBA player can look arounnd and say, “Well, it is kids just like me who do well here.”
