Extensive Review of Book on UCLA, Discrimination, Bias

[Derec]

But we cannot throw away the black communities as if they are so much trash.

Not giving them preferential treatment is not "throwing them away" like "trash".

Ending the drug war would be a good start.

It would be. As long as you don't propose some sort of "affirmative action" to legalize drugs only for blacks and hispanics. Or even worse a kind of "Swedish Model" where the users are prosecuted but street level dealing is legalized (because street level dealers are "underprivileged").

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The number of blacks in school remained about the same but they were going to lower tier schools--and graduating rather than dropping out.

Talk about a hurricane fart. This thread qualifies. 3.8% of student population are blacks attending UCLA (one of the elite schools) whilst they are about 8% of California population. 40% of student population are Asians attending whilst Asians makeup less than 4% of California population. The problem is at the both elite schools and at the lower tier (state universities and state colleges) schools.

The fact that black students are graduating at state colleges implies to me that blacks can do the job. Its probably not a valid conclusion to draw that blacks are less capable than Asians. Culture and bias can be illuminated as they have been for centuries. We've just not found a way to be fair nor just. We punish cultures that don't emphasize education and we reward too much cultures that do. We punish cultures we feel are inferior and we reward too much cultures we admire.

You're proving *MY* point!

They're doing fine at the state universities--thus it's not discrimination at work. The elite universities are harder, they're not up to it, they fail.

Since education is the roadway to success we need to be fair about providing access. We demonstrably aren't. SAT, etc, reflect success in the marketplace (professional and business positions). Since blacks are poorly represented such scores don't reflect black success. Look at the skewed black and Hispanic success stories we are looking at the direction standards should be moved.

Yeah, we aren't--we're screwing the Asians.

The problem here is that you are taking it as a given that they are actually performing equally and that it's the measurement at fault. When every yardstick says the same thing it's not likely a measurement error, quit looking for a yardstick that says what you want to see.

 

[Metaphor]

SAT, etc, reflect success in the marketplace (professional and business positions). Since blacks are poorly represented such scores don't reflect black success.

Do you have any evidence that the slope of the line regressing 'success in the marketplace' on 'SAT, etc' is significantly different between Blacks and others?

 

[untermensche]

Not giving them preferential treatment is not "throwing them away" like "trash".

The current policy of throwing young black men in jail is in effect throwing them away.

If preferential treatment is needed to break the cycle of poverty and jail so be it.

It is the small price for hundreds of years of slavery and segregation and imprisonment based on race.

 

[maxparrish]

Groseclose's book, though recently published, is based on his experiences and data sets from 2007. A prof of Economics and Political Science, he was a member of the six member faculty oversight committee for admissions. In 2006 UCLA had a downturn in black admissions and great pressure came from identity groups and politicians to get more blacks into UCLA. The chancellor visited the committee (a first) and explained to them that he was under severe pressure, and asked them to revamp the system to get more black admissions. The had to do it so as not violate California's prop 209 which bans racial discrimination against any person, white, black, Latino, or Asian.

The faculty committee had six members, three of which thought race balancing was the highest political priority. The committee modified the system to a "holistic" consideration, and created a two step process for review of admissions. After a year Groseclose noticed numbers that didn't seem right - yes there was a dramatic increase in black admissions but Asian and Latino enrollment dropped. As a statistician and quantitative analyst he asked to see the source admission files, with personal references redacted. The three race priority 'activists' refused to provide it (it was a 3-3 split on the committee). Eventually after a great deal of political wrangling a member of the public, a friend of Groseclose, used the freedom of information act and threat of a lawsuit to force release of data (although not the student essays in the file).

Groseclose followed up with an analysis after a few years under the new system, with some stunning revelations.

Latinos came from the poorest income families, and went to the worst rated high schools but had DROPPED in enrollment under the new system. One half of black applicants had at least one parent who had a BA, same as Asian Americans. Only 1/4 of Latino students had one parent complete a BA. Black applicants had significantly more parents who had graduate degrees, more than Asians or Latinos. As you might expect, average family income ranked high to low: Asian, Black, Latino.

The admission acceptance rates were:

Poor African Americans 55 percent
Rich African Americans 38 percent
Poor North Asians 23%
Rich North Asians 18%

In other words, rich African Americans had a much greater chance of admission than an equally qualified Poor North Asian. If a magic genie gave an applicant the choice of changing their income level OR their skin color, the applicant would be much better off asking for a new skin color...it increase one's chances by 20 percent. In contrast, a change in family income only increased an applicants chances by 5 percent.

As far as I know, nothing has changed...except Groseclose, a tenured prof, recently resigned from UCLA. The institutional and faculty backlash created by his revelations made staying difficult.

 

[Derec]

The current policy of throwing young black men in jail is in effect throwing them away.

If you don't want to do the time don't do the crime. While it is true that US criminalizes too many things (and that penalties for many not so serious offenses are way too strict) blacks outperform other races when it comes to criminal activity by a wide margin even for crimes that should remain illegal including very serious crimes like murders.
In any case, I do not see the connection between incarcerating some blacks and giving other blacks preferential treatment for college admissions. Human beings are individuals, not fungible representatives of their skin color.

If preferential treatment is needed to break the cycle of poverty and jail so be it.

There has been preferential treatment for four decades. Doesn't seem to be working for its intended purpose, quite aside of inherent injustice of institutions discriminating by race (and gender).

It is the small price for hundreds of years of slavery and segregation and imprisonment based on race.

Bullshit. Two wrongs do not make a right. Today's black college students have not experienced slavery nor Jim Crow. Likewise, today's white or Asian students never were slaveholders. So why should the latter be punished to give the former an unjust advantage? Most problems in the black community are self-made and must be self-unmade as well.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Not giving them preferential treatment is not "throwing them away" like "trash".

The current policy of throwing young black men in jail is in effect throwing them away.

If preferential treatment is needed to break the cycle of poverty and jail so be it.

It is the small price for hundreds of years of slavery and segregation and imprisonment based on race.

1) The ones being thrown in jail aren't likely to have made it to college anyway.

2) You're still asserting that it works--when in reality that preferential treatment is holding them down, not boosting them up!

 

[maxparrish]

Not giving them preferential treatment is not "throwing them away" like "trash".

The current policy of throwing young black men in jail is in effect throwing them away.

If preferential treatment is needed to break the cycle of poverty and jail so be it.

It is the small price for hundreds of years of slavery and segregation and imprisonment based on race.

What an odd moral universe you live in. There is a very, very, very old legal principle that there is no such thing as blood debt. Whoever was wronged, especially those wronged prior to civil rights laws, have no right to collect from the innocent. And they certainly don't collect the debt long after they are dead, and the debtor is long dead. A student applicant, be they White, Asian, Latino has done no wrong to black applicants; so unless you believe in racial blood debt, that the unknown sins of the great grandfathers to other great grandfathers must be paid by their children's children's children your debt collection is immoral.

A man or woman does not acquire debt by virtue of their genes, nor does a man or woman become a creditor by virtue of their genes.

The moral principle is illustrated at a web site:

As an estate attorney, I am often asked "am I responsible for my deceased relatives debts?"


The answer is almost always "no." Unless you are a joint debtor or co-signor, you are not responsible for your deceased relative’s debts.

Who is responsible for my deceased relative’s debts?

... If your relative died with no assets, then the debts do not get paid. You are not legally nor morally obligated to pay your relative’s debts with your own money.
What if the deceased relative is my spouse, parent or sibling?

It does not matter how closely the person was related to you. If your husband or wife dies owing money on a loan or credit card that was solely in his or her name, you are not personally liable for the debt. The same applies if the decedent is your mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, etc.

Hence only someone who believes in debt bondage from a racial blood debt would find your claims valid.

 

[thebeave]

Not giving them preferential treatment is not "throwing them away" like "trash".

The current policy of throwing young black men in jail is in effect throwing them away.

If preferential treatment is needed to break the cycle of poverty and jail so be it.

It is the small price for hundreds of years of slavery and segregation and imprisonment based on race.

Its not just blacks, though. Chinese suffered a lot of discrimination in the past:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Chinese_Americans

The history of Chinese Americans or the history of ethnic Chinese in the United States relates to the three major waves of Chinese immigration to the U.S. with the first beginning in the 19th century. Chinese immigrants in the 19th century worked as laborers, particularly on the transcontinental railroad, such as the Central Pacific Railroad. They also worked as laborers in the mining industry, and suffered racial discrimination at every level of society. While industrial employers were eager to get this new and cheap labor, the ordinary white public was stirred to anger by the presence of this "yellow peril." Despite the provisions for equal treatment of Chinese immigrants in the 1868 Burlingame Treaty, political and labor organizations rallied against the immigration of what they regarded as a degraded race and "cheap Chinese labor." Newspapers condemned the policies of employers, and even church leaders denounced the entrance of these aliens into what was regarded as a land for whites only. So hostile was the opposition that in 1882 the United States Congress eventually passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited immigration from China for the next ten years. This law was then extended by the Geary Act in 1892. The Chinese Exclusion Act was the only U.S. law ever to prevent immigration and naturalization on the basis of race.[1] These laws not only prevented new immigration but also brought additional suffering as they prevented the reunion of the families of thousands of Chinese men already living in the U.S. (that is, men who had left China without their wives and children); anti-miscegenation laws in many states prohibited Chinese men from marrying white women.[2]

In 1924 the law barred further entries of Chinese; those already in the United States had been ineligible for citizenship since the previous year. Also by 1924, all Asian immigrants (except people from the Philippines, which had been annexed by the United States in 1898) were utterly excluded by law, denied citizenship and naturalization, and prevented from marrying Caucasians or owning land.[3]

So, what do you want to do about this past injustice? Should we give the Chinese preferential treatment into colleges? Seems like today we are discriminating against them also when it comes to college admissions. They were screwed then, and they're screwed now. How do you want to fix it?

 

[ZiprHead]

The admission acceptance rates were:

Poor African Americans 55 percent
Rich African Americans 38 percent
Poor North Asians 23%
Rich North Asians 18%

In other words, rich African Americans had a much greater chance of admission than an equally qualified Poor North Asian.

I asked you this before and you have yet to answer.

Colleges and universities traditionally give advantage to in-state students as opposed to out of state. Could this be another example of this?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The admission acceptance rates were:

Poor African Americans 55 percent
Rich African Americans 38 percent
Poor North Asians 23%
Rich North Asians 18%

In other words, rich African Americans had a much greater chance of admission than an equally qualified Poor North Asian.

I asked you this before and you have yet to answer.

Colleges and universities traditionally give advantage to in-state students as opposed to out of state. Could this be another example of this?

The only reason that would be a factor is if the colleges were in areas with more blacks than average. That's not the case for most colleges.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

If preferential treatment is needed to break the cycle of poverty and jail so be it.

How about treatment for everybody in the cycle of poverty and jail? This isn't just poor black families. Equating black with this is a big part of the problem in fact. There are plenty of black people who are nowhere near this stereotype and trying to shoehorn it onto them only helps to keep racism alive.

It is the small price for hundreds of years of slavery and segregation and imprisonment based on race.

You should be compensated for segregation or unjust imprisonment done to you, not to your ancestors, and not to people who are not even your ancestors but happened to share your skin tone.