LOL red Princess, Your last post was a poor explanation. But rather than try to write a clarifying post, just let this thread go, get some rest, and spend some time pondering about your position on all this. I guarantee a similar topic will rear its head soon enough, and you can share your reflections then. Just my opinion . . . .
Desert Scar, You said that blacks and Native Americans were discriminated against. Then what do you call the Chinese/Japanese concentration camps in America? What do you call the Holocaust? I was generalizing, but you are as well. Not all the Asains are weathy and smart. It is part of their culture to work hard and be the best that they can. Some cultures have overcome suffering as a whole more than some others. Some, as a whoe, are still trying. I didn't mean anything bad about it. Just oberservations. subtomic- You're right. I just finished my response to Timing. Going to the doctor now. If I stop now, I'll have to start all over again in the next one. It'll break the cycle!
Second part to my response to Timing... originally posted by Timing Verrrrrrrrry weak of you to pussyfoot around and throw out racist allegations over this data. According to US News, TSU is not anywhere near the quality of UT and A&M. You email them and tell them they're racist if you feel like it. When they laugh you down then come back and admit what a pathetic insinuation you've just made. I am throwing out racists allegations over data. Do you know how they come up with their rankings? The biggest factor that US News uses in ranking schools is reputation. I think schools like UT and A&M have better reputations than U of H and TSU. So of course they’re going to be higher. The second thing is retention. U of H does not have high retention. The kids I know that went to UT and A&M basically had their tuition handed to them by mom and dad. I know many more kids at U of H who have to work to pay for their tuition. I know of several who could not pay it and they drop out to work so they can come back. And many people, such as my mom, who went and dropped out and then came back when they were a little older, financially stable and wiser. I don’t think these things necessarily mean UT is better than U of H. The schools are totally different. And as long as reputation is weighted most heavily, UT and A&M will always be ahead of TSU and U of H. The majority can always win if it votes together. The minority can never win without outside help. See that point? Women have representation in the Senate, blacks have none. Do you see that point? There is a difference between under representation with a majority electorate and no representation with a minorty electorate. You're trying to compare apples with asteroids. It’s a valid comparison. Blacks are 12% below full representation in the Senate. Women are much further away than that. And women don’t vote for women just to get women into office. And the Senate is only one small part. Blacks have representation in every other national office and the numbers are very close to equal. The Senate represents America. The majority is white. Do you realize that if Texas elected one black Senator, blacks would have 50% representation in the Senate from Texas. That would be under representing the whites. The Senate was not even invented for representative purposes. It was to help give smaller states an equal say. The bigger states thought this was unfair and we have the House to be representative of the population. Blacks are represented very well in the House and the rest of the national government. So you don't want to trade Lee Brown for President, Vice-President, two US Senators, the Governor, and the County Commissioner? Interesting that you would give examples of black representation in Clarence Thomas and Colin Powell who are both Republicans. See when black people get representation it's from the party they voted 4-1 against in the last election. Thomas and Powell are quite clearly not very representative of the politics of the majority of the black community. How ironic huh? No, I would not trade it. I’m just pointing out how blacks ARE represented at near equal levels. And you didn’t put restrictions on party ID. You want black representation, well, you got it. Sorry they’re not good enough. And because Clarence Thomas is on the Supreme Court, that seat will ALWAYS go to a black judge. It’s set a precedent. So don’t complain about Thomas. He guaranteed that blacks will always be in the Judicial Branch of the government. White America is the incumbent and it's damn hard for anyone to compete with them too. Recognize... Yeah, that was kind of my point. Incumbents are pretty much white, WHICH EXPLAINS WHY THERE ARE MORE WHITES IN CONGRESS. Incumbents are preventing anyone else from taking office, especially women and minorities. Race is a characteristic that can provide shared experiences, heritage, culture, and ideas. Yeah, again, you’re not reading too well. I said I know they share a heritage and culture and identity. Do you not listen? But religion, ethnicity, party ID, place of birth, where and when you were raised also are characteristics that people have in common. Most minorities disregard anything but race when they vote. It's not a personal preference based on race it's a personal preference based on common ideas and experiences. If Alan Keyes was running against Bill Clinton there would be less knowing black people voting for Keyes just because he's black. Just like if Colin Powell were to run against Pat Buchanan I'm sure there would be less knowing white people voting for Buchanan. You know you sure want to call a lot of things racist for someone who never sees anything racist when things are brought up here. Very peculiar stuff. I am only calling these things racist using your definition. I would vote for Keyes over Clinton. And I would vote for Powell over Buchanan. And you think I’m stupid, so I just proved your point wrong. Stupid white people will still not vote solely based on race. By your example of black people not going to the best schools, you implied that they were stupid. So I guess you’re thinking that there’s a lot of these “less knowing” black people. So I guess then they would vote for Keyes, as you said they would. So, you’re agreeing with me when I say blacks will vote for blacks. Funny. You'll be hardpressed to convince me that 0% of 13% is less than 12% of 52%. Zero is zero. You can claim that women are more under represented but what does that matter to people who have no representation at all? None is none. And yes thank goodness for racial gerrymandering (even if it's probably illegal) because without it there'd be even less minority representation in Congress. Lines aren't drawn that way for whites because they have plenty of representation. Duh... No, lines aren’t drawn that way because it would be racist to do so. People in government care less about representation than self-image. I think you're missing the point that women aren't discriminated against anywhere near on par with blacks. Women appear in college just as they appear in population. The fact that they don't appear in government at the same rates is simply residue of past discrimination towards them. In addition, a white man is likely to represent a white woman better than a black man. I think that if the number of blacks in the House and the Senate were at 12% then it would be better because blacks would have a voice to share their views, questions, and vision. It would mean that blacks are finally getting a fair share of the government pie. Women did not always appear in college just as they appeared in the population. That took many years and lots of hard work. And I think that even if blacks had 12% in every office, some would still complain. They would feel they had to be over-represented to make up for those years of oppression (that’s the kind of bs thinking I hate). But you’re still ignoring the fact that blacks are very nearly represented in government at national levels. And they are represented better than that in local and state governments. You’re making a big deal out of one office that only elected 2 members from every state. Things could be a lot worse off. Perhaps if blacks were represented well by whites they wouldn't use race as a determining factor and there wouldn't be a need for black colleges, black churches, black sororities, and the Negro Leagues. Oops, the Negro Leagues are gone because they finally got a fair chance. Imagine that? Perhaps if blacks apply to schools more and try harder in those inner city schools (not all of which are bad, btw, and not all blacks attend them) they might be represented well by whites or get more representatives in office. Blacks want to be equal to whites, but they don’t want to be identified with them. I have heard the term “oreo” used many times to talk about black people who don’t “act black”. That tells me that it’s bad to be black but not “act black.” Blacks do not want whites to represent them. They see that as bad. The more schooling people get, the more democratic they become (democratic meaning ideals, not the party). Men tend to become more republican and women more democratic. The blacks that are in their middle ages right now are the ones who went through desegregation or the aftermath. They probably are not as well educated as white middle aged people are. Therefore, that’s why blacks would vote for Clinton and Gore. As the years go on, if black people continue to be enrolled in colleges as they are and if they increase in enrollment, they may very well become republican as well.
Princess, It is your fault you were not in the top 1%, not Asians. Why, therefore, even bring that up? Since I went to a majority black (hispanics were #2), poorly funded high school, I can agree that the black kids just aren't trying hard enough. It is their fault that the administrators didn't know what they were doing, mismanaged funds, made up all sorts of bad rules, and discouraged academic excellence. That "academic" funds were funnelled to the football team. That honors teachers spent 45 minutes explaining how smart they were, how dumb the students were, and how fine they were when they were in high school. Regular teachers were even better. They were really good at reading the newspaper. That all the windows were bricked over to provide a dark learning environment. That there was no chemestry teacher 3 of the 4 years I was there. That guidence counselors don't even know how to apply to college. That the school is picked to be the new home for 10-20 criminal youths that get bussed in on their blue busses every morning. That there were limited computers. That textbooks were 10-20 years old. That, on rainy days, students had to walk through water and mud soaked halls. That coke machines were turned off during lunch (lol, I never understood that one). Ah, memories...such a long time ago... (please note: while sucky, my school was not even in the really bad category).
You quite obviously didn't know the definition of the words and that's why you had an ole knee-jerk when I substituted. I said meaningless not insignificant... doh.
The largest schools are not always the best. And there are plenty of large schools that blacks attend at numbers near the population. In this case the two larger schools were far and away rated higher than your much smaller school. OOPS... try again. U of H does not have a good reputation as a school. You read a magazine to find out if a school is good instead of talking to people from that school, looking at their acheivements, and finding out about the school from the school. America's Best Colleges 2002 How we rank schools Our method serves families well By Robert J. Morse and Samuel M. Flanigan Can rankings help you identify colleges and universities that are right for you? Certainly, the college experience consists of a host of intangibles that cannot be reduced to mere numbers. But we believe that it is possible to objectively compare schools on one key attribute: academic excellence. The tables that appear on the following pages should help you weigh some of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the schools that you're considering. In studying the tables it's important to remember that their best use is for comparing colleges within a category; you don't want simply to focus on the top-ranked schools. Indeed, since we may change our methodology from year to year, we do not invite readers to track colleges' annual moves in the rankings. This year, for instance, while we did not change our ranking formula, we recategorized many schools and added several institutions to our rankings. Why? In late 2000, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching released an updated version of its Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, a grouping system that U.S. News uses as the basis for its ranking categories. In short, if Carnegie moved a school from one category to another, we also switched the school into the new category. Carnegie's is the most widely accepted system for classifying American colleges and universities. It is used by governments and foundations when they make funding decisions, and is favored by researchers who study trends in higher education. This was the first time since 1994 Carnegie had updated its classification, which was originally published in 1973. U.S. News has based its ranking categories on the Carnegie system since 1983, the year we began publishing college rankings. I guess US News is just a little more scientific than meeting a student and visiting the campus huh? But don't let that stop you from telling me how wonderfully underrated U of H is which I notice you're not claiming for TSU which was rated right with U of H. The 10% rule was not solely enacted to get blacks into colleges. I'm just saying it does contribute to the reason today. Oh really? So it's just some strange coincidence that as soon as Hopwood overturned affirmative action that the legislature passed the 10% rule? That's a good one. I doubt they're filling them out at the levels of white people. Why haven't you found something to prove me wrong. I come from an extremely poor family and I still applied to schools I couldn't afford. And why do you assume they are not in the postition to succeed? Anyone can go to college today. The government and private agencies will help anyone who needs it. WHY are they not filling them out at the levels of white people? THAT is the friggin point. That doesn't go against my point. A&M is really not that well known outside the state of Texas and neither is UT. Yes, they're both good schools, but that means nothing. If anything, they're better known for their sports than the actaul education you receive. Where do you get this stuff? A&M is so not that well know that it ranked what 15th in US News? Stop lying to yourself please. Is Harvard not that well know either? Good schools and poor schools is not the same. U of H is a good school. You can apply to anywhere and if you have the grades, you get in. If black people don't choose to go to one of those 'good' schools, that's their fault. There is no requirements on applications to check the race box. You may think it's a good school but US News thinks it's a lower rung school. Considering US News did a rating for ALL schools I'll think I'll value their opinion quite a bit more than yours. So now blacks don't choose to be around themselves at good schools why? It's their fault now? Okay... You used big schools and said mine weren't big enough. U of H is the third largest. Again I showed the two largest schools and both are rated waaaaaay above U of H. So third place and poorly rated doesn't compare. Unless you're an upset U of H student I guess.
I actually said that African Americans, Native Americans and Latinos (mostly Mexicans who became Mexican Americans after a treaty was struck) were systematically discriminated via violence, harassment and/or "legal" swindling (stacked judges, juries, inadequate representatrion, manipulative language translations, etc.). Not saying this is the only discrimination in US history, but some of it on the largest scale (in terms of #s of people affected) and in a most systematic fashion. The holocaust wasn't in the US, I don't get the point there on this debate. I was not generalizing, I never said these were the only groups oppressed. The concentration camps in the US were terrible--albeit the numbers effected are not as large as the examples I gave. Gosh Princess, did you not read my post talking about how different Asian and Pacific Island groups are from each other and further even within them there are tremendous differences (say among Vietname immigrants) depending on historical and socioeconomic context for a particular family or community. You can't lump all Asians together and say "they are all hard working because of their culture" and have it be an accurate, thoughtfull or meaningful statement--it is a gross generalization. For you to say that is like a Chinese American saying all Americans of European decent are lanky, dumb, lazy, or whatever. Also, there is less culturally in common with some of the recent Vietnamese immigrant sub-groups in California to the Japanse Americans sent to the camps post WW2 than there is with White Appalachian coal miners to White Houstonians living in River Oaks. Despite their huge differences, at least there is a common langage for the former pair of groups. I am glad you recognized you generalized, but I would be happier if you did less of it by getting a more thoughtfull and complex view of topics such as this.
Originally posted by Princess I am throwing out racists allegations over data. Do you know how they come up with their rankings? Yep you sure did which is amazing considering you were ignorant as to how they came to their conclusions. The biggest factor that US News uses in ranking schools is reputation. I think schools like UT and A&M have better reputations than U of H and TSU. It wasn't your poll, who cares what you think about TSU's reputation. Did they survey you? So of course they’re going to be higher. The second thing is retention. U of H does not have high retention. The kids I know that went to UT and A&M basically had their tuition handed to them by mom and dad. I know many more kids at U of H who have to work to pay for their tuition. I know of several who could not pay it and they drop out to work so they can come back. And many people, such as my mom, who went and dropped out and then came back when they were a little older, financially stable and wiser. I don’t think these things necessarily mean UT is better than U of H. The schools are totally different. And as long as reputation is weighted most heavily, UT and A&M will always be ahead of TSU and U of H. So since 3% of students at UT and A&M are white and get their tuition handed to them what does that say about U of H having a much higher enrollment of blacks? Draw those dots together. UT is a better school than U of H based on a wide criteria, not just retention and reputation. Faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, graduation rate performance, and alumni giving rate were also criteria used Interesting that you would focus strictly on reputation. Usually schools earn their reputations through performance, not just a shot in the dark. It’s a valid comparison. Blacks are 12% below full representation in the Senate. 12% minus 12% is zero. The Senate represents America. The majority is white. Do you realize that if Texas elected one black Senator, blacks would have 50% representation in the Senate from Texas. That would be under representing the whites. The Senate was not even invented for representative purposes. It was to help give smaller states an equal say. The bigger states thought this was unfair and we have the House to be representative of the population. Blacks are represented very well in the House and the rest of the national government. What is with this under representing the whites kick? How many Senators from Texas have ever been black? Can you hear the crickets chirping? Exactly... You said blacks were at 10% in the House which is hardly very well and not even equal. No, I would not trade it. I’m just pointing out how blacks ARE represented at near equal levels. And you didn’t put restrictions on party ID. You want black representation, well, you got it. Sorry they’re not good enough. You should be sorry and no it's not good enough. And because Clarence Thomas is on the Supreme Court, that seat will ALWAYS go to a black judge. It’s set a precedent. So don’t complain about Thomas. He guaranteed that blacks will always be in the Judicial Branch of the government. Knowing your steadfast adherence to fairness for the black community I know you'll be right on every President's ass to always have a black judge on the bench. We're counting on you. Yeah, that was kind of my point. Incumbents are pretty much white, WHICH EXPLAINS WHY THERE ARE MORE WHITES IN CONGRESS. Incumbents are preventing anyone else from taking office, especially women and minorities. Funny, that's pretty much my point. Whites are disproportionately wealthier, disproportionately better educated, and disproportionately dominate government. Whites prevent anyone else from taking power, especially blacks which makes your claims that blacks just need to work harder pretty damn funny. By your example of black people not going to the best schools, you implied that they were stupid. So I guess you’re thinking that there’s a lot of these “less knowing” black people. So I guess then they would vote for Keyes, as you said they would. So, you’re agreeing with me when I say blacks will vote for blacks. Funny. No YOU'RE the one saying they're stupid and that they'd rather go to TSU to be with their "own kind". You're the one saying blacks need to study harder and apply more. Talk about stupid. And I think that even if blacks had 12% in every office, some would still complain. More evidence of your racist leanings. And they are represented better than that in local and state governments. You’re making a big deal out of one office that only elected 2 members from every state. Things could be a lot worse off. The US Senate is the elite house in Congress. That is a very big deal. Yeah things could be a lot worse off, there could be more people who think like you in office. Perhaps if blacks apply to schools more and try harder in those inner city schools (not all of which are bad, btw, and not all blacks attend them) they might be represented well by whites or get more representatives in office. Even more evidence to your racist leanings. Perhaps if blacks had proportional wealth they'd not have to go to poor schools and get a poor education and not go to college. Then perhaps more blacks would graduate from good colleges and more blacks would enter elite level politics and more blacks would be elected. Just perhaps though. Blacks want to be equal to whites, but they don’t want to be identified with them. I have heard the term “oreo” used many times to talk about black people who don’t “act black”. And I have heard the N word and spic used about minorities who didn't know their place. That tells me that it’s bad to be black but not “act black.” Blacks do not want whites to represent them. They see that as bad. Whites representing blacks has been historically pretty damn bad so it's easy to see why blacks might not want whites representing them. Or maybe you can't see the effects of white political representation on black America. I suspect you probably can't.
I'm not going to use further bandwidth on this thread just to make Jeff happy (lol) but I thought this article articulated very well the state of denial that people like Princess are in when it comes to the issues that have been discussed here. The White Fairness Understanding Gap -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Paul Street Educators, policy-makers, activists, and academics regularly decry and claim to offer solutions to the problem that Blacks tend to score significantly lower than whites on standardized academic achievement tests. It is interesting, then, to read the results of a survey conducted last Spring by the Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, and Harvard University. According to this high-profile research, whites are far behind Blacks when it comes to grasping elementary facts of American social, economic, and political reality. “Large numbers of white Americans incorrectly believe,” the Post reports, “that Blacks are as well off as whites in terms of their jobs, incomes, schools, and health care.” For some time now, most white Americans have wrongly believed that blacks enjoy equal opportunity. Now white false consciousness in racial matters appears to be escalating into a profoundly distorted image of social and economic outcomes. African-Americans polled in the survey showed a much stronger grasp of reality regarding racial inequity. When the test subject is fairness, whites lag significantly behind blacks in the United States. Is this a paradox when whites score higher on academic achievement tests? No, for at least five interrelated reasons. First, the American educational curriculum from kindergarten to 12th grade is notoriously conservative on questions of social, racial, and economic justice. Meaningful ideological controversy is taboo in history classes and texts that portray America as a virtually classless land of equal opportunity. Such texts and lessons hardly equip students to understand the unequal distribution of wealth, income, and power between Blacks and whites. They shame minority and poor children, encouraging those kids to disengage from school, thereby contributing to the black-white test-score gap. Second, there’s no substitute for experience when it comes to grasping social reality. White Americans tend to understand Black experience in exceedingly abstract and distant terms, on the basis of projected fears and fantasies fed by a white-owned corporate media that showers them with disproportionately affluent images of African-Americans. Third, that media has long been feeding Americans a steady diet of misleading and provocative news bites on affirmative action for minorities and especially for Blacks. Exaggerating the extent to which whites have suffered from that policy, this coverage has interacted toxically with nearly three decades of relative income stagnation and even decline for masses of white Americans to stoke the fires of white racial illusion. Confronting economic insecurity in their daily experience and viewing rich African-Americans and the alleged excesses of affirmative action and “multiculturalism” on their televisions, millions of whites now think that Blacks have caught up with the majority race. Fourth, white America’s unreal picture of Black reality is reinforced by the persistent hyper-segregation of American communities by race and class. In Chicago, home to the nation’s largest contiguous settlement of African-Americans, researchers estimate that 80 percent of Blacks would have to move if they wished to live in a neighborhood whose racial composition matched that of the city as a whole. There, as elsewhere, poverty and such related social indicators as unemployment, single-parent families, and the possession of criminal records are very disproportionately concentrated in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Four out of five U.S. whites live in virtually all-white neighborhoods and nearly 9 in 10 suburbanites live in communities that are less than 1 percent black. Nowhere, fittingly enough, is racial segregation more strikingly evident than in the schools. Nearly 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Southern school segregation was unconstitutional and “inherently unequal,” the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University has recently reported, school “re-segregation” has been underway for at least ten years. It is “happening,” the Civil Rights Project finds, “despite the nation’s growing diversity” and “is contributing to a growing gap in quality between the schools being attended by white students and those serving a large proportion of minority students”—a gap that receives curiously little mention in standard pronouncements on the black-white test-score gap. “More than 70% of the nation’s black students,” the Project reports, “now attend predominantly minority schools,” whereas “whites on average attend schools where less than 20% of the students are from all of the other racial and ethnic groups combined.” With little substantive connection to the actual daily lives of African-Americans from childhood on, whites rely excessively on racial myths encouraged by dominant ideological paradigms positing color-blind equality of opportunity as an achieved reality and racism as a thing of the past. A fifth factor is the tendency of many Americans to take an at- once pragmatic and self-interested orientation towards truth. By the terms of that perspective, “the truth of a belief depends less,” wrote the late radical Australian social psychologist Alex Carey, “on the evidence which leads to its adoption than on the consequences that follow from that adoption.” Many whites reason that they have little to gain and much—preferred access to better neighborhoods, schools, jobs, incomes, and health care—to lose from acknowledging the pervasive, deep, and deepening structural inequalities that continue to exist between blacks and whites even as the U.S. moves beyond the explicit racial bigotry of previous eras. A sixth factor is the weakness of the left. White perceptions would be more accurate if the country possessed significant populist and social-democratic movements that saw ordinary blacks and whites not as pitted in a zero-sum game of competition with each other but as partners in common opposition to the disproportionately (though not exclusively) white upper class—the top 10 percent, say, of Americans that possess more than two-thirds of U.S. wealth. Such movements have tended to provide pragmatic and idealistic reasons for whites to acknowledge and act upon the reality of black experience. Were they to revive, they would help channel ordinary whites’ sense of social grievance away from waning affirmative action protections for Blacks and toward the numerous ways in which the predominantly white upper-class rigs the game for its own; for example, the legacy system at Harvard, an affirmative action program for children of the elite. It will be the task of citizens and not establishment institutions like the Washington Post, the Kaiser Foundation, and (with all due respect to the excellent work of the Civil Rights Project) Harvard University to expand popular interracial resistance to the fantastically privileged minority of Americans. In the meantime and consistent with that project, whites should try to learn more about the black experience past and present. This will mean going beyond standard textbooks, questioning mainstream propaganda, visiting outside lily-white neighborhoods, and engaging in real conversation and relationships with African-Americans. Through these and other methods, it is hoped, whites can work to overcome their fairness understanding gap. http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/oct01street.htm
Timing- Your agruements are getting less logical as this goes on. I don't even want to read the rest of them. US News and Carnegie both base their ranks on reputation the most. Harvard will always be a great school then (although I don't see how you can compare that to A&M). I never said A&M was not a good school, just that it's much better known in Texas than the US. Reputation does not make a great school. It takes years to build reputation and years to destroy it as well. I focused on reputation because that is the number one determinant of how a school is ranked. Number one. As far as the incumbancy issue goes, you're wrong in saying that they have money because they are white. Incumbant os any race have money and resources because they are incumbants. They get more media exposure and funding because they are already in office. Whites have more money because of this, but it's because of position, not race. They are not preventing blacks from taking office because they're black and the representatives are white. They're preventing ANYONE from holding office even people of their own race. Incumbants hate blacks, yeah, that's a logical explanation for all of this. Blacks are 12% underrepresented in the Senate. 12-12 is 0. Women are are 34% under represented in the Senate. The Senate is the higher house, but there are checks and balances that keep it from holding all the power. Black make up 10% of the House, which is only 2% below actually population. That is very good. Obviously, the oppressive white majority isn't doing their job of keeping blacks out of office very well. And there will always be a black man in the Supreme Court. Whether a president wants to or not, he will always fill that seat with a black person. If anything else, he'll look bad if he doesn't and we know how important looks are. You should thank the Republicans for that. There have been studies done that show that blacks don't do well in school because the tests are done so that whites will succeed more. I think it's all crap. If they were designed that way, I would not have black friends who are National Merit Scholars, or ones that are at Standford, or ones were in the top 5% of my graduating class. So yes, I do think that if anyone tries hard enough (not just blacks) they can learn and succeed. Again, black people are going to the "good schools" at rates that whites are. You are contributing this to lack of education and lack of money. There are plently of black people who get good educations and go to "good schools." And wealth is not a factor. There are tons of scholarships, student loans and grants available to students. Hell, the small amounts that my scholarships do not cover are cavered by loans. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to go to school. You are failing to recognize that I don't see everything like this. You want to talk about why blacks aren't represented and why they don't go to the "best" schools and I'm giving you reasons. I know they're not the only ones and do not apply to all case. And they don't apply to just blacks either. If black inner city kids are not getting good educations and going to "good" school, then the white kids in the inner city aren't either. I know there are less of them, but it's not a uniquely black problem. Ah, and more insults. I like that. Whites are not to blame for all of every minorities problems. Most of them are historical reason that are in the process of changing. It takes time though. Everyone does have equal opportunity. Some take advantage of it more than others. Mayor Lee Brown came from a family of farmers. He got his degree and a PhD. He became police commissioner and now mayor. Why can some people (of any race) rise above their disadvantages and succeed and some can't. I think we're still in the beginning stages of things. Desegragation did not happen all that long ago. Changes cannot happen overnight. I think blacks can get ahead if they want to, although they face more hurdles. Once black people are making money and getting better jobs and going to good schools, then it will flow from there. Women went through the similar struggles. It took many years, but we are pretty much equal. We don't get paid as much as men for the same jobs and we're not represented well, but things are pretty good. Again, you seem to think that this is the only way I see things, and it is not. Do I think blacks have disadvantages? Yes I do. How could anyone not. But I think they have to opportunities to pass these if they want to. What I am against is putting white people out of jobs and schools who are more than qualified for them for a black person, or anyone else, who is less qualified. I think if blacks want to go to school, they should be able to. I am not going to give up my seat that I earned and worked hard for though. I wouldn't expect a smarter man to give up his place for a woman just because she's female.
If you had enlightened views on racism we'd not be having this discussion. US News and Carnegie both base their ranks on reputation the most. Harvard will always be a great school then (although I don't see how you can compare that to A&M). I never said A&M was not a good school, just that it's much better known in Texas than the US. Reputation does not make a great school. It takes years to build reputation and years to destroy it as well. I focused on reputation because that is the number one determinant of how a school is ranked. Number one. You're attempting to put the cart before the horse. Reputations don't make great schools. Reputation is one of 7 categories used. It's not 75% reputation and then whatever else. Your opinion on U of H is obviously heavily biased are you're a student there. Every student at every college listed can make your claim to have an unfair reputation. After we're done with all of the campus complaining we're back at square one which is this list. If U of H were clearly better than it's reputation then it would quite obviously be at the top of the charts in other aspects of the grading and be much higher than in the 4th tier of the 249 schools. The same applies for every other school as well. Academic reputation. The U.S. News ranking formula gives greatest weight (25 percent) to reputation because the reputational survey allows the top academics we contact to account for intangibles such as faculty dedication to teaching. The other reason we give reputation the most weight is because a degree from a distinguished college so clearly helps graduates get good jobs or gain admission to top graduate programs. A school's reputation is determined by surveying the presidents, provosts, and deans of admissions at institutions in a single category. Each individual was asked to rate peer schools' academic programs on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished). Those individuals who didn't know enough about a school to evaluate it fairly were asked to mark "don't know." Market Facts Inc., an opinion-research firm based near Chicago, collected the reputational data; 67 percent of the 4,087 people sent questionnaires responded. Retention. The higher the proportion of freshmen who return to campus the following year and eventually graduate, the better a school may be at offering the classes and services students need to succeed. This measure has two components: six-year graduation rate (80 percent of the retention score) and its freshman retention rate (20 percent of the score). The graduation rate indicates the average proportion of a graduating class who earn a degree in six years or less; we consider freshman classes that started between 1991 and 1994. Freshman retention indicates the average proportion of freshmen entering between 1996 and 1999 who returned the following fall. Faculty resources. Research shows that the more satisfied students are with their contact with professors, the more they will learn and the more likely it is they will graduate. We use six factors from the 2000-2001 academic year to assess a school's commitment to instruction. Class size has two components: One represents the proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students (30 percent of the faculty resources score); the second represents the proportion with more than 50 students (10 percent of the score). Faculty salary (35 percent) is the average faculty pay, plus benefits, during the 1999-2000 and 2000-2001 academic years, adjusted for regional differences in the cost of living (using indexes from Runzheimer International). We also weigh the proportion of professors with the highest degree in their fields (15 percent of the score), the student-faculty ratio (5 percent), and the proportion of the faculty who are full time (5 percent). Student selectivity. A school's academic atmosphere is determined in part by the abilities and ambitions of the student body. We therefore factor in test scores of enrollees on the sat or act tests (40 percent of this ranking factor); the proportion of enrolled freshmen who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school classes for all schools in the national universities–doctoral and liberal arts colleges–bachelor's categories, and the top 25 percent of institutions in the master's and comprehensive colleges categories (35 percent of the score); the acceptance rate, or the ratio of students admitted to applicants (15 percent of the score); and the yield, or the ratio of students who enroll to those admitted (10 percent of the score). The data are for the fall 2000 entering class. Financial resources. Generous per-student spending indicates that a college is able to offer a wide variety of programs and services. U.S. News measures the average spending per student on instruction, research, student services, and related educational expenditures during the 1999 and 2000 fiscal years. Graduation rate performance. This indicator of "added value" was developed to capture the effect of the college's programs and policies on the graduation rate of students after controlling for spending and student aptitude. We measure the difference between a school's six-year graduation rate for the class that entered in 1994 and the predicted rate for the class. The predicted rate takes into account the standardized test scores, among other characteristics, of these students as incoming freshmen, and a variety of characteristics of the school, including the school's expenditures on them. If the actual graduation rate is higher than the predicted rate, the college is enhancing achievement. Alumni giving rate. The percentage of alumni who gave to their school during the 1999 and 2000 academic years is an indirect measure of alumni satisfaction. To arrive at a school's rank, we first calculated the weighted sum of its scores. The final scores were rescaled: The top school was assigned a value of 100, and the other schools' weighted scores were calculated as a proportion of that top score. Final scores for each ranked school were rounded to the nearest whole number and ranked in descending order. As far as the incumbancy issue goes, you're wrong in saying that they have money because they are white. Then you explain to me why the average white family is 11 times wealthier than the average black family. Quite obviously being white makes it a hell of a lot more likely than you'll be wealthier than your black counterparts. If there is no correlation between white and being wealthy then I guess white people are just lucky like that. Incumbant os any race have money and resources because they are incumbants. They get more media exposure and funding because they are already in office. Whites have more money because of this, but it's because of position, not race. And how is this different from the incumbent white society oh wise one? They are not preventing blacks from taking office because they're black and the representatives are white. They're preventing ANYONE from holding office even people of their own race. Incumbants hate blacks, yeah, that's a logical explanation for all of this. Speaking of logical explanations, explain to me how position and money in our society prevents blacks who are disproportionately poor from taking office. Oops... Blacks are 12% underrepresented in the Senate. 12-12 is 0. Women are are 34% under represented in the Senate. The Senate is the higher house, but there are checks and balances that keep it from holding all the power. Black make up 10% of the House, which is only 2% below actually population. That is very good. Obviously, the oppressive white majority isn't doing their job of keeping blacks out of office very well. Blacks would rather have an under represented say than no friggin say. The rate of their under representation means nothing when they have no representation at all. Being under represented is not "very good" as you want to call it. The oppressive white majority will have a certain ally in yourself. You'll be great at ignoring issues concerning the black community and then call them racist when they don't vote for your candidate. Nice... And there will always be a black man in the Supreme Court. Whether a president wants to or not, he will always fill that seat with a black person. If anything else, he'll look bad if he doesn't and we know how important looks are. You should thank the Republicans for that. I guess I should thank Lincoln for freeing the slaves too huh?Republicans are just so great at looking out for minorities. Bravo, well done. There have been studies done that show that blacks don't do well in school because the tests are done so that whites will succeed more. I think it's all crap. If they were designed that way, I would not have black friends who are National Merit Scholars, or ones that are at Standford, or ones were in the top 5% of my graduating class. So yes, I do think that if anyone tries hard enough (not just blacks) they can learn and succeed. This isn't an issue of blacks trying hard enough. It's an issue of why they have to try so much harder and overcome so much more than whites to attain any semblance of their success. A black man in 1900 could have voted if he survived the lynch mobs, the beatings, the harrassment, the intimidation, threats, poll taxes, and literacy tests. A former slave could have gotten a college education if he tried hard enough, that's obviously not the friggin point. This also implies that you think blacks don't try hard enough. A racist generalization quite in line with blacks loving fried chicken that they pay for with their airport security job. Again, black people are going to the "good schools" at rates that whites are. Um... no they're not. 1) Princeton - black enrollment - 7% 2) Harvard - black enrollment - 8% 3) Yale - black enrollment - 8% 4) California Institute of Technology - black enrollment - 1% 5) MIT - black enrollment - 6% Stanford - black enrollment - 9% Penn - black enrollment - 6% 8) Duke - black enrollment - 10% 9) Columbia - black enrollment - 8% 10) Dartmouth - black enrollment - 6% 1. University of California–Berkeley black enrollment - 4% 2. University of Virginia - black enrollment - 10% 3. University of Michigan–Ann Arbor - black enrollment - 8% 4. Univ. of California–Los Angeles - black enrollment - 4% 5. U. of North Carolina–Chapel Hill - black enrollment - 11% 6. College of William and Mary (VA) - black enrollment - 5% 7. Univ. of California–San Diego - black enrollment - 1% 8. Univ. of Wisconsin–Madison - black enrollment - 2% 9. U. of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign - black enrollment - 7% 10. Georgia Institute of Technology - black enrollment - 8% University of California–Davis - black enrollment - 3% University of California–Irvine - black enrollment - 2% 13. University of Washington - black enrollment - 3% 14. Pennsylvania State U.–University Park - black enrollment - 4% 15. Texas A&M Univ.–College Station black enrollment - 2% Univ. of California–Santa Barbara - black enrollment - 3% University of Texas–Austin - black enrollment - 3% 18. University of Georgia - black enrollment - 6% 19. University of Florida - black enrollment - 8% Univ. of Minnesota–Twin Cities - black enrollment - 4% 21. Ohio State University–Columbus - black enrollment - 8% Purdue Univ.–West Lafayette (IN) - black enrollment - 3% Univ. of Maryland–College Park - black enrollment - 14% 24. Rutgers–New Brunswick (NJ) - black enrollment - 8% University of Delaware - black enrollment - 6% University of Iowa - black enrollment - 2% Virginia Tech - black enrollment - 4% You are contributing this to lack of education and lack of money. There are plently of black people who get good educations and go to "good schools." Where are they? I can't find them in these numbers unless you want to drag up Georgia State, TSU, and U of H again as a comparative to the top 35 schools above. You are failing to recognize that I don't see everything like this. You want to talk about why blacks aren't represented and why they don't go to the "best" schools and I'm giving you reasons. Not trying hard enough and wanting to be with their own kind aren't reasons. They're racist generalizations but feel free since you've been so comfortable using them in the past. If black inner city kids are not getting good educations and going to "good" school, then the white kids in the inner city aren't either. I know there are less of them, but it's not a uniquely black problem. Yes, the very common poor white inner city kid phenomenon. Perhaps you should read the article above. Whenever the black kids aren't getting something it's not about why that's happening it's about the small amount of whites kids who might not be getting it too. Whenever it's about blacks being under represented or not getting something at all it's about women not getting something. And you're a white woman, imagine that? Ah, and more insults. I like that. Whites are not to blame for all of every minorities problems. No they're not because minorities except Jews make themselves victims remember? A lot of the roots of problems in minority communities lie in the infrastructure of American society of which a lot was created by racist policies and tactics. Most of them are historical reason that are in the process of changing. So white racism in history isn't a white problem but a historical reason? Amazing how you just did that. Everyone does have equal opportunity. No everyone does not and this is the root of your denial. An opportunity doesn't equate to equal opportunity. Why can some people (of any race) rise above their disadvantages and succeed and some can't. Why do minorities disproportionately have to rise above their disadvantages if they have equal opportunity? I think blacks can get ahead if they want to, although they face more hurdles. Then how do they have equal opportunity?
I wanted to post this because I keep reading even here on this board how it's getting better and things are getting better and so on. This illustrates how things really aren't getting proportionally better and also shows the disproportion of wealth in America among blacks and whites. These are median values now so please keep that in mind. Averages would show a much bigger difference. These are straight from the Census Bureau.
Hey Timing, not that I doubt you or anything, but where did you find the statistics on black enrollment in colleges? I'd like to look at black enrollment of some other colleges if at all possible.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/ranknatudoc.htm You can select each individual college and simply click on student body. It breaks it down by total enrollment, race, fraternity, international, and stuff like that.
Timing, just curious, what do you think about TSU? I lived close to it when I was in Houston and talked to some people who studied there. There was a Russian transfer student who complained to me about something he called "reverse racism"...he said that people were treating him badly because he was white...then, when they would find out that he was a foreigner, they would be more friendly...kind of like "then it's not your fault"... I am just reporting what the Russian guy said, not making any conclusions or anything myself. http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/directory/drstudent_3642.htm
I don't know much about TSU so I have no opinion on the quality of the school. I've worked with people who've gone there and can't say I've ever had a problem. I also don't doubt your friend's account. Whites don't have a monopoly on racism. If TSU were an all asian school, or all hispanic, or all Native American your friend would probably run into racism just as well. This is all the more reason why we need appropriate representation of minorities in our colleges. A little perspective about the scope of your example though. TSU has 4,000 full time students, 1% white. UT has 33,000 full time, 3% black and A&M has 33,000, 2% black.
Mrs JB knew a guy who was white and went to TSU and he apparently loved it. He said they treated him great. I think, often times, it is in your perspective. He seemed like the kind of guy that would get along great with everyone so he got along great with black people at TSU. Most times, if you want to get along with people, you can. Apparently, this guy was known as "the white guy" and everybody got along with him great and vice versa. My father worked with a large percentage of African Americans as a teacher and he got along with all of them. It was often the white teachers he had problems with or the bosses, regardless of color. My father can get along with just about anyone and it showed there.
My mom's best friend in Katy went to Prarie View on a scholarship...wanna know why she got the scholarship? She was white. I don't recall a bunch of protests or anything.
