I don't know that that's necessarily true. Large institutions have a tendency to let inertia guide them rather than looking for the best solution. The "we've always done it this way" frame of mind is often in evidence in such institutions. I've seen studies for years noting that standardized tests are not good indicators of collegiate success, yet there are almost no attempts to get rid of them or even lower the weight given to them in admissions decisions. I maintain that universities are not really looking for an alternative to the current system of admissions. The only time admissions criteria seems to change is when it's forced by the court system or the Legislatures.
This is really the issue here. AA is a means to an end. Has the problem AA addresses been fixed? Clearly it has not, or we would not be having this discussion. As an aside, I think that AA has been successful. I would argue that now the shoe (discrimation) is now on the other foot and starting to get a little tight that the other foot is starting to b****. The white people in this country are now experiencing racism on a first hand basis and unsprisingly not liking it. I would argue that this is a vey important lesson for white people to learn. Is AA "fair"? Certainly it is not. Is AA justified? Certainly it is.
thank you for your honesty...someone honest enough to say, "affirmative action is government instituted racism." thanks for also letting us white folks we need to learn this lesson! i didn't realize it was my government's job to teach me this lesson of racism by denying people admission into public universities simply because of the color of their skin...wow. but i'm glad someone finally said it...i'm glad someone finally had the balls to say it's justified so that white people can feel racism firsthand. thanks.
Certainly the best way to redress wrongs against a specific group is to make sure those wrongs are committed against everyone else, no?
exactly...as long as we all understand that this is the motivation...because if it is, affirmative action is so freaking dead in the water it's unbelievable...i'd love to hear an elected official put it just like No Worries did...that would seal its fate.
REF.... First off, i just want to say that this is a highly controversial topic that we are unlikely to agree upon. most people don't . As for your plan, I read it. I don't think that you read mine. But to respond to your latest comment The reason that it creates a system like this (although I know that this is not your intention by the system you are suggesting) is because of US history. Former legal and social inequity still has ramifications today. If you just look at the stats, the greatest percentage of the lowest economic classes is minorities. Economic class relates directly to opportunity. Therefore, something needs to be done to take that into consideration. Thus, it a high percentage of minorities aren't receiving equal lower-level educational opportunities. I am not going to go into details, but trust me, this is a reality. However, if you did read my suggestion, my system has nothing to do with race. It has to do with economics (the fact that more minorities would get a boost in admissions is simply a result of the fact that I stated above). Therefore, it wouldn't have to do with white vs. black or hispanic or whatever. It would have to do with opportunity provided. Furthermore, I am not saying let in a poor kid who hasn't had much opportunity with a 900 SAT over a kid who has had every chance with a 1250. I am simply saying if they are comparable, previous academic opportunities should be considered. If a kid who has received the best education is only slightly better than a kid who has attended a poor innercity school with terrible teachers, think of what the kid without much opportunity could do... I agree that it would be GREAT if your "color blind" system could work. And, I think that one day it will. However, we need to create a greater level of parity before it can. I think that can be achieved by my socio-economic action system explained in my first post in this thread. Then, the "color blind" system can kick in.
That much is true. Affirmative Action in education acts as reverse discrimination. There is no two ways about it. It is the same argument as saying that Jews should be allowed to put Germans in concerntration camps and it should be government sponsored...just to correct for the Holocaust. As for the innercity school argument, that is why Bush enacted the 10% rule while he was governor. That means that regardless of where you went to high school, if you were in the top 10% of your graduating class...you get into ANY public college in Texas. That has gone a long way to combating the concerns that you describe. Regardless of what system you put in...it will NEVER be totally fair.
Originally posted by Refman Affirmative Action in education acts as reverse discrimination. There is no two ways about it. It is the same argument as saying that Jews should be allowed to put Germans in concerntration camps and it should be government sponsored...just to correct for the Holocaust. So affirmative action is the same as saying that whites should be enslaved, beaten, raped, murdered, and had every right and every possession they have taken from them? Talk about over the top, through the woods, and on to grandma's house. As for the innercity school argument, that is why Bush enacted the 10% rule while he was governor. That means that regardless of where you went to high school, if you were in the top 10% of your graduating class...you get into ANY public college in Texas. That has gone a long way to combating the concerns that you describe. Wrong... Officials here now say that affirmative action is a thing of the past in the Texas university system, and that the Top 10 Percent plan has been a success. But talk a bit longer to campus leaders and high school principals, and you get a more nuanced picture. Affirmative action of another sort is very much alive in Austin. The 10 percent solution has worked in some ways but not in others; Hispanics and African Americans continue to be underrepresented, with blacks making up only 3.4 percent of the entering freshman class this fall. But if diversity is the goal, university officials have learned that the 10 percent plan is not sufficient to achieve it. In its first year of operation, it had almost no impact on minority presence on campus, which fell off drastically after the 1996 court decision. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A28460-2002Oct27¬Found=true If all people went to the same quality schools and had the same quality of education leading up to college then we wouldn't see the humongous racial disparity in college enrollment at the best colleges that requires a remedy like Affirmative Action. You're b****ing about the fix for what's wrong without really identifying the true wrong here. What is "fair" is that all races be represented accurately in college as they appear in society similar to the way Title IX requires female students to be equally represented in athletics as they appear on campus. 10% is not proving to be a remedy for this at all. Kids in the top 10% from from good high schools could already get into UT and a lot of kids in the top 10% from bad high schools are as unqualified as many of the past Affirmative Action candidates that people have b****ed so much about in the past. After five years of 10%, we still don't have a "fair" representation of minorities in college. What 10% really does is hurt white students more than Affirmative Action ever did and it hurts state schools with overcrowding which will impact the quality of education they can provide. There's "fair" for ya.
Why isn't the ten percent rule having an effect on diversity? If the numbers are the same as tey were under AA (I don't know this to be the case, but language like "continue to be underrepresented" makes me believe it is"), then it is working at least as well, isn't it? How are minorities represented in just those who are in the top 10% of their high school classes? edit: I did a quick search and found that the ethnic breakdown in 1997 of the top ten percent was 68% White, 15% Hispanic, 9% Asian American, 4.5% Black, 3% not reported, and less than 1% American Indian. I don't know if this reflects the general population breakdown of Texas. edit2: Texas population by race in 1999: Hispanic 29.7, Non-Hispanic White 55.9, Black 12.3, and Other 3.3. It seems that university enrollment much more closely follows the top ten percent of graduating high school seniors than it does overall population. Shouldn't that be the case, as they are the best 10% from each school, meaning they were only competing against others in very similar circumstances.
This touches on another point. The fact that minorities are over-represented in the high school dropout numbers does make it harder for universities to have a campus that corresponds racially with the entire state. One of the big problems that needs to be addressed in order to eventually achieve even greater diversity on university campuses is that high dropout rate in high school and before. There are obviously issues there that need addressing, as they do affect the situation we're talking about in regards to college admissions.
As some have said, the top 10% of any school would more than likely be going to college anyway. Next, this is not going a long way in anything, it is just supposed to make affluent white people feel better about themselves. It does nothing about the poor education being received by thousands of children, it does not do anything about poor teachers, administrators, etc that the poor schools get stuck with, etc. Education in this country is such a waste of time and nobody really seems to care, beyond giving "let's all feel better" lip service. Yay, bedtime stories. Haha. Damn those poor people. To an earlier topic - SAT's could easily and need to go away. They do nothing.
Timing, The anti-AA posters appear to believe that the problem that AA addresses can be easily fixed by a small change, like the 10% rule. This is sheer fantansy. But it is convenient to believe. I asked MadMax how he would fix "the problem". His silence is notable. There is no easy solution. We will have to pay a heavy price for that solution, whatever that is. It is no surprise to me that when the going gets tough everyone second guesses the proposed solution without offering an alternative.
You think that MORE discrimination is the answer. How convenient for you to believe. His silence has been due to the fact that he hasn't been logged in. I'm guessing he turned off the computer and went home to enjoy an evening with his family. I offered a reasonable alternative and you summarily dismissed it. The pro AA group out there brushes it aside stating that inner city schools are not good. NEWS FLASH...HISD (for example) isn't really good regardless of where in the city you are...regardless of your creed, color, etc. Start trying to solve the problem rather than running to reverse discrimination as the answer to all of society's ills. BTW...Timing this goes out to you as well.
We are talking apples and oranges here. You say make the college admission process completely color blind. Problem solved, right? Only trouble is that the problem I am talking is not solved. Let's work backward. Some minorities are currently under-represented in college applications. How can that problem be solved?
It certainly cannot be solved at the University level. That is a problem which must be solved at the local school level. I agree that it must be solved. But affirmative action in college admissions in response to this problem is like treating chest congestion for a case of lung cancer.
Inner city schools are dirt poor. Out of all of them in one district, there might be one "flagship school" that the news usually fixates. How can you solve a local school system that gets its revenue from property taxes? Don't forget that senior citizens like their rent controlled dwellings. As a minority without benefits, I wish I had more diversity in my college. Not because there's too many white people, but because there's too many snobby stuck up Asians. Well I guess snobby stucked up assholes comes in all shapes and creeds. Both systems are out of whack if you ask me. One system has some minority groups using it as a security blanket. How does one explain the lower applications of Blacks in the UC system? Another does not promote diversity, and might depend on the admissions clerks' racial and economic biases. Whether too liberal/"PC" or too conservative/"social darwinist", they all point to the same flaw: it won't be fair. So what should be the answer? GPAs? It works in college, if you ever get there, but in schools, point inflation (# of honors classes taken/given) and the quality of learning are pigeon-holed into numbers. The Essay portion? My essay was crap, so I didn't get into any college I wanted. Can I sue on the behalf of the lingo-challenged? Or maybe the SAT scores...the ones I took extra classes for and got a nice and high number but was screwed by my lingo-imparement? Bah... making 6 seperate IQ tests, each designed by a person in his key demographic (oops... double that. You don't want to discriminate women too.) would work just as well if you ask me. And if you're multiracial, you get to take fractions of the portions you belong to...
I don't know why a district like the Dallas Independent School District should be dirt-poor. They have the property tax advantage of having significant business property taxes. In many suburbs, the number of houses, especially new ones, can make property taxes a losing proposition no matter how nice the houses are (I know in a city like McKinney, it costs more for the city to have a new housing subdivision built than they collect in taxes on it for many years. Don't know why that is the case, but that's certainly what the Planning & Zoning Commission numbers have shown). (The following numbers are for the 2000-01 school year) According to the TEA , the DISD pays its teachers more than the state average, has a property value per student that is 50% higher than the state average. And they spend $6,530 per student each year. The average per student for the state is $5,166. The average teacher pay is higher than the state average in the Dallas Independent School District, as well. For the record, Houston spends $7,088 per student, San Antonio spends $6,785 per student, Austin spends $7,555 per student, Fort Worth spends $6,500 per student and El Paso spends $6,095 per student. DISD has more potential money per school than nearly every other district in the state (Austin ISD is the only district with higher property values in the state). There's no reason any of its schools should be underfunded. Personally, I think there may be a problem beyond money in many districts with high percentages of economically disadvatanged students. And again, we get back to the drop-out problem. No matter how much money a district spends per student, they can't effectively educate students who aren't in school.
'Reverse discrimination' means you are not discriminating. 'Discrimination' applies to people of all races.
