Why is affirmative action good?

[Debaser]

Affirmative action is racist. (Or sexist, depending on which group we are talking about). It’s treating a person better than others based on race. This is racist.

To those suggesting class or income based AA: this is in addition to the fact that poor people already are much more likely to qualify for financial aid for college? Now you want colleges to accept unqualified students simply because they are poor?

This is just punishing the kids who actually have money. It’s also punishing the parents who planned ahead and saved for college instead of taking a vacation every year.

Why isn’t this thread in GD?

[Mr.Moto]

@ftg

Again, I must point out that nearly response posted so far contains a fundamental misunderstanding of how AA actually works in college admissions. How and why it is done is not the same as what the media portrays it.

If the data available to colleges is already biased, then corrections have to be made to make it less biased. Due to fears of bad publicity, a large amount of bias against some minorities still exists even after some AA is applied.

The issue is not what your SAT scores are, the issue is how well are you going to do in college.

In no way shape or form are majority group members being excluded by “less qualified” minorities when AA is done right. (And it almost always is.)

Note that many colleges also accept a limited number of applicants from a given high school, a given state, and so on. Highly qualified students are routinely denied admission in favor of less qualified people of the same background. Obviously, to compain that some poor little majority kid wasn’t admitted because a minority kid was, all the time ignoring the other truly less qualified majority kid that was admitted, would be racist.

You have to ask yourself: “Of all the other kids that were admitted instead, why am I only worrying about the minority ones?” Think real hard about that one.

In particular, avabeth, why aren’t you bothered by these other majority kids that were placed ahead of your relative???

ftg, I always thought that the SAT was a pretty good predictor of success in college, which accounts for its popularity. Also, don’t African-Americans have a disappointingly high college dropout rate?

If the issue is how you’re going to do in college, then affirmative action has, again, produced mixed results. The dropout rate may have been worsened by students getting into schools they wouldn’t have qualified for on their credentials alone. A student who would have done well at a state college, for example, winds up leaving an elite private college early. This hardly helps the student in question, and isn’t great for any affirmative action program that, you claim, is usually run well.

Also, there are legitimate issues to discuss here without accusing other posters, even in a cute way, of racism. I think your characterization of avabeth’s questioning of AA as such was way out of line.

[holmes]

@Mr. Moto

Affirmative action was sold as a way to break generational poverty and discrimination.

My grandfather came to America as a penniless, illiterate Italian immigrant, in an era when Italians faced significant discrimination.

His children, all nine, were high-school or college educated, and work in a number of jobs. None are wealthy, but most did pretty well.

His grandchildren, though, did very well. This generation of the family is mostly college educated, includes many professional people, and has incomes solidly in the middle class or upper middle class range.

This is one family’s climb up from poverty. No affirmative action was involved.

I see no reason, especially with racism a diminishing force in this country, to continue a model that, at best, has shown mixed results. Either switch to a class-based affirmative action plan, or scrap the whole discriminatory mess altogether.

Right. So there were LAWS that forced your grandfather to live and work in a certain area and profession?

Yea, that’s right I remember seeing dogs, water hoses and batons being turned on 2nd generation Italians who wanted to vote or go to decent schools, or live in better neighbourhoods.

I remember those LAWS that forced your 2nd generation Parents and Uncles and Aunts, to a third level education and second class status.

I hear your “story” all the time…"my immigrant family had nothing… " what your family had was white skin and an intact culture and you are living proof of the value of that.

Do you really think, that 300 years of Black folk, didn’t work hard? Didn’t sacrifice, didn’t want better for their family, the same way that your grandfather did?

Yea, racism is dimishing force…

[monstro]

I have stated my ambivalence about AA previously on the board. As a double minority (black woman) it is easy for me to be a champion for AA. Hearing some anti-AA people, you’d think blacks and Hispanics were dominating everything. From my perspective (as a grad student at a major university) we do not. In my department of about twenty-five profs, there are no black or Hispanic faculty. I am the only black Ph.D graduate student in my department. If AA is pushing out white folks, I cannot tell.

But then again, I don’t like being seen as a “beneficiary”, like I owe the system for my success. I don’t like living in fear of slipping up lest someone think I’m just another incompetent seat warmer. I also don’t like the idea of qualified people being given a short shrift, or my own qualfications being secondary to my appearance.

But I know people and systems are still racist. What do you do about this reality?

[holmes]

@monstro

… I don’t like being seen as a “beneficiary”, like I owe the system for my success. I don’t like living in fear of slipping up lest someone think I’m just another incompetent seat warmer. I also don’t like the idea of qualified people being given a short shrift, or my own qualfications being secondary to my appearance.

But I know people and systems are still racist. What do you do about this reality?

Monstro, do you really think that the guy whos gets a job, because his dad and the owner fought in the war together, stays up nights worring about this stuff? Or the alumni’s son? Or all the other “beneficiaries”? I don’t and I wouldn’t.

I know people who got into college in the 1980’s on AA and everyone of them have done well. Firmly middleclass and upperclass and everyone of them have said, that college was the door. Not the education, but the contacts.

The way it was supposed to be, but wasn’t; not for their fathers, or their grandfathers.

They are productive members of society, their businesses employ people and they have broken the cycle…within one generation. The same as many immigrants do…only it’s been 300 years in the making.

I got no problem with AA, when it’s done right.

[carnivorousplant]

@monstro

But I know people and systems are still racist. What do you do about this reality?

I think it sucks.
I’m doing my best.

[Mr.Moto]

Holmes, you say you hear my story all the time. Can’t you concede there’s something of value in the story of my family, and that of millions of other families in America?

I don’t want to minimize the real struggles many minorities have gone through, but just because somebody is a minority doesn’t mean they’ve struggled. And my family, though white, has had do do its share of fighting for our slice of the pie.

Jim Crow didn’t exist in Pittsburgh, but discrimination surely did. My grandfather was passed over for jobs, denied housing by landlords, and shut out of educational opportunities past a certain grade just because he was Italian.

I’m all for opening the door. Lord knows members of my family have recieved some breaks like this. Two of my uncles and one of my aunts went to college on scholarships. This was an opportunity that they capitalized on, and it has made a real difference in their lives.

If you can make it class based, resentment over the racial aspects of AA will disappear, IMO. I think this would be a vast change for the better.

[holmes]

[QUOTE=Mr. Moto]
Holmes, you say you hear my story all the time. Can’t you concede there’s something of value in the story of my family, and that of millions of other families in America? [/qoute]

Not when the implication is, “if only those colored folk, worked harder like my grandfather did…”

I don’t want to minimize the real struggles many minorities have gone through, but just because somebody is a minority doesn’t mean they’ve struggled. And my family, though white, has had do do its share of fighting for our slice of the pie.

i believe you, but your family didn’t have the government creating ways to keep your family in second citizen status…by the second generation, your parents were “in”…the blacks in that generation were having firehoses turned on them.

Jim Crow didn’t exist in Pittsburgh, but discrimination surely did. My grandfather was passed over for jobs, denied housing by landlords, and shut out of educational opportunities past a certain grade just because he was Italian.

Again, what LAWS were written that prevented your grandfather from his educational opportunites? What you don’t get and this ISN’T a slight against your grandfather…is he didn’t HAVE to be Italian. He could have changed his name, lost his accent and became whatever he wanted to be. He could have gotten that job, that house, that degree, all they would have saw is a white man…unlike the grandfather of black person. They couldn’t change what they were. Their children couldn’t change what they were and on it goes.

I’m all for opening the door. Lord knows members of my family have recieved some breaks like this. Two of my uncles and one of my aunts went to college on scholarships. This was an opportunity that they capitalized on, and it has made a real difference in their lives.

Good, but you didn’t say that in your first post, you gave the impression that your entire family pulled themselves up by their bootstraps…you didn’t mention the scholarships…and your story is typical of the ones I’ve heard. They always ‘forget’ the low interest loans, the GI Bills, the family friend who gave them their first job…It’s always…“my family came here with nothing…”

If you can make it class based, resentment over the racial aspects of AA will disappear, IMO. I think this would be a vast change for the better.

Please, race and class in this country is still way too linked to skin color…what may happen since they are more poor whites, than blacks in this country is even less black folk benefiting than you have now…and they’re aren’t that many now.

[Shodan]

Tell the kid “It’s not all about you.”

We don’t get everything we want in life. So he has to go to a different school. So what?

All true. Unless the kid is black.

AA is racist. It states, as clearly as may be, that the Irish made it without special breaks, and the Italians (hi, Mr. Moto), and Chinese, and Japanese, and Jews, and practically every other ethnic group in the world.

But blacks are hot house flowers, and cannot be expected to succeed under the same rules as the rest of us. They need a special break from Big Massa.

:rolleyes:

Regards,
Shodan

[carnivorousplant]

@Shodan

But blacks are hot house flowers, and cannot be expected to succeed under the same rules as the rest of us. They need a special break from Big Massa.

When people feel like that, perhaps they do.

What else do colleges use to give points for admittance? How many spaces would ending athletic privileges save?

What about a lottery?

[Gary_T]

@phall0106

I’m a woman, but there is no way I’d want a job position based on the fact that I’m a woman. either I can do the job, or I can’t, but don’t give it to me based on the fact of my chromosomes. I find it difficult to imagine that some of my “minority” friends and aquaintences would want to be awarded something based solely on their race.

It’s not a matter of being awarded something based on race or gender, it’s a matter of preventing institutions from categorically denying people opportunities based on their race or gender. Rest assured that there have been myriad cases of women not even being considered for certain jobs just because they were female, with no concern whatsoever for whether they could do the job or not. If you believe there was a more effective way to counteract this sort of thing than AA, I’d love to know just what that would be.

[rjung]

@Shodan

But blacks are hot house flowers, and cannot be expected to succeed under the same rules as the rest of us. They need a special break from Big Massa.

Yes, after all, everyone knows blacks get treated equally by the rest of society – the notion that blacks would be disproportionately denied jobs, stopped by police, or imprisoned simply due to their ethnicity is positively ludicrous!

:rolleyes:

[ftg]

[I have to do separate reply posts here. Completely unrelated issues and since some people feel the urge to quote a whole post, this will reduce the quoted verbage.]

Issue the one:

You go into a restaurant and you are waiting to be seated. Person “A”, the same appearance as the host (but not you) comes in after you and is immediately taken to a table. Person “B”, the same appearance as you, comes in and is also immediately taken to a table.

Are you miffed only at A being seated ahead of you or both A and B? Should you be miffed at all since you don’t know the whole facts? E.g., they could have reservations, one could have been in before you and just went out to his car to retrieve something, etc.

If you are only upset about A, then guess how others are going to interpret your complaint?

[ftg]

[See header of previous post.]

Issue the second.

I was completely unaware that we were discussing a single ethnic group at all here. I see no reason whatsoever to bring up issues with regard to one particular group at all.

The following is based on my experience serving on many graduate admission committees for my dept. (And chaired once.) I have never been personally involved in undergraduate admissions into the college as a whole (but occasionally for the dept. if the major is restricted).

There are so few blacks in my field applying to graduate school that many times a dept. can’t do affirmative action since there are no applicants.

When I started my last job, the number of female black PhD candidates in the US was so small that I was sharing my office with 50% of them! (She was a faculty member at one place finishing a PhD at another.)

In my field, the big issue is female AA. And we are still talking about very small numbers. When I headed the admission comm. at one place, there were two women graduate students in the dept. I worked my butt off finding qualified women applicants. We admitted four (a dozen total students) that year.

Of that pool of students, all but one successfully finished their PhD. The one who didn’t left for personal reasons but could have easily finished if he wanted to. It is considered the best class of students the dept. ever had.

I did not admit lesser qualified women ahead of better qualified men. Quite the opposite.

The prof. in charge of the comm. a previous year explicitly said he wasn’t going to allow any unqualified women in. So guess how many were admitted that year.

We generally put applications into three piles: clear admits, clear rejects and “others.” If you spend time looking carefully thru the “others” pile, asking questions, bringing people by for visits, etc., you will find gems that others will overlook (accidently or deliberately).

In addition to women, I also worked hard to bring in students from 2nd tier state schools. There was a big bias against them which I thought unfair. I consider that AA as well. Not based on skin color, gender, etc. Just where you happen to have done your undergrad work.

(Another fun factoid to get people off the “single color” issue. The place I did my PhD had a strong AA program to attract men into the nursing program. They were so successful that the Feds complained they had too many men by national averages! Too many men in a nursing program???)

I repeat, AA is not about a single group. I wonder why only one group is brought up in some posts?

[Elza_B]

@Johnny Bravo

Every time a person loses out because of the color of his skin, an injustice has been done. The same for gender or religion or any other factor you can think of that’s independent of ability.

I’d guess that the OP’s child wasn’t necessary denied because he’s white, but that his friends got extra points for being minorities. I think that’s a distinction worth noting. Or maybe they just didn’t like his essays (or any other arbitrary factor).

In any case, your cousin needs to stop feeling bad for himself, make sure he doesn’t resent his friends, and start looking at second choices.

Good luck.

I plan on talking to him tonight - apparently, he’s feeling better about things and realizes that he’s still going to college, he’s just not going to his first choice. And he certainly doesn’t resent his friends, he’s made that very clear. He’s happy for his friends.

He really is a good kid, and I want to stress that HE has not made any points that I brought up - I brought up the question because of the situation and because I was genuinely curious.

And as I said, my own emotions have played a large factor in the incident - which is why I wanted to get opinions on the good points of affirmative action. I appreciate the calm and thoughtful responses. They answered many of my questions, and I’m truly not upset about my cousin’s friends getting in - I was baffled, I guess is the right word. I’m glad the kids got into a school they wanted - I’ve met them and they’re good kids who will work hard.

ftg, just to clarify - if the opposite had happened - my cousin got into a school with a lower GPA and lower SATs, I’d probably have said the same thing in reverse - I would have wondered if there was something else working behind the acceptance. That’s just my own general curiousity. It doesn’t mean that there’s any sort of ‘evil’ behind my thoughts, just my own curiosity at why it happened.

After speaking with my mom, it seems that there was an article in the paper a few weeks ago about the school accepting more out-of-state students so that they can get the higher tuition - thereby decreasing the number of in-state students that they accept. That was what led me to ask what the difference was between the two friends that were accepted and my cousin. But it seems a lot of in-state students are getting screwed, regardless of class/income/race, in favor of out-of-state students. So I know that was a factor now as well. (I apologize for no cite, I don’t live in that state any longer, but I’ll do a hunt for the article tonight online to see if I can find it).

Again, I really appreciate the calm and rational responses. It’s definitely given me food for thought. And the kid will be fine - he’s not one to linger on disappointments, and I know he’ll be excited about the school he plans on attending (since we found out that he did get into another school yesterday, one closer to home - which is actually, in my opinion, a better school than the one that denied him…).

Ava

[ftg]

[Again see first of this group. Sorry again.]

Issue the third:

Too many people (esp. in the US) are fascinated by measuring stuff. Give people a number and they will cling to it for dear life, regardless of whether it represents anything useful or not.

Going back to a prev. univ. position I held. The grad program had just started. A student from country X was admitted and was doing really well. (In fact, he asked me some questions that lead to my most famous research paper. Cited over a thousand times.) So we made contacts with schools in country X to get more like him. We admitted some more. Uh-oh.

That dept. funded grad students in a special way. They were funded by pooled research money via the the dept. No trying to get on a prof’s grant. After passing quals, students were supposed to find a prof and a problem to work on. The 2nd batch of students from country X just sat there. You give them a non-research problem and they will crack it in no time. Ask them to come up with a research problem and nothing.

But the number of applicants from country X skyrocketed since we had already accepted some. (Word got around.) Many of them had 800-800 GRE scores. If we relied on GRE scores, all our admits would have been from country X. And the program would have tanked.

We eventually figured it out. Country X has an entirely test-driven educational system. One test at the end of the year for a course, a test to get into a college, etc. So the ones that came out the other end were basically really good at taking tests like the GRE. The first one we admitted was special: He had done his undergrad work outside of country X in a system similar to ours.

We still continued to accept a few students from country X, but we carefully looked thru the folders for signs of independent work that would suggest future success in our program. Letters of rec. were carefully read, etc.

(And what about GRE scores for the test in our area? We pretty much ignored them unless they were abysmal. Students in the 30th percentile would sometimes be admitted. It was and is a nearly useless test.)

Moral of the story: SATs, GREs, etc. are vastly overrated. They tell you how well people do on those tests, they don’t say much about how people will do in college.

[Dogface]

@Johnny Bravo

Every time a person loses out because of the color of his skin, an injustice has been done. The same for gender or religion or any other factor you can think of that’s independent of ability.

I’d guess that the OP’s child wasn’t necessary denied because he’s white, but that his friends got extra points for being minorities.

If it’s points for being dark-skinned enough, then there is no difference. Why wasn’t he admitted? His overall “score” wasn’t high enough. Why were others admitted? They got bonus points. Why didn’t he get the points? He was white. Therefore, he was denied admission on the basis of being white–he was denied admission on the basis of his race. He was denied admission because he was white. They just were more convoluted about it. Flat-out “race bonuses” are a stupid idea. There are far better ways to implement the theory, but they actually require thinking, so don’t rely on administrators to implement them.

[mlerose]

Sorry for the bit of a hijack, but avabeth, you may want to tell your cousin that he can appeal the rejection.

Most kids who go to the trouble of appealing that stuff end up getting in, if he’s still really got his heart set on going to that school.

[monstro]

People also need to understand that being a minority does not give you a pass for everything. I got rejected from one of the grad schools I applied to. Now that I’m seeking employment, I keep getting those “sorry but we decided to go with someone else” kind of email messages. So it’s not like the roads are paved with gold for anyone.

The bad thing about AA-gone-wrong is when people are only concerned about filling quotas. What if I apply for a position and they already have their token minority? This situation is more problematic to minority candidates than it is to non-minority ones.

[Elza_B]

@mlerose

Sorry for the bit of a hijack, but avabeth, you may want to tell your cousin that he can appeal the rejection.

Most kids who go to the trouble of appealing that stuff end up getting in, if he’s still really got his heart set on going to that school.

Just got off the phone with the kid’s mother - he’s doing MUCH better. I did suggest the appeal to her and she’s going to look into it. Thanks for the suggestion!

She told me that in the rejection letter they got, they were told that the average GPA was a 3.7, and the average SAT score was around 1200. So he wasn’t thrilled, but he realizes that it’s just the way things go sometimes - life’s not fair.

Ava