(split) Affirmative Action discussion

[AthenaAwakened]

I am not side stepping the issue, I am making the issue no longer an issue. If the slots increase, it cuts competition and more people get the education they want and fewer people have to fear being shut out just because someone else got in.

And what is and is the reality is what we decide to make or not make the reality. Ya gotta start somewhere and why not here and why not now?

Schools and universities don't need infinite slots. most people in a given society don't want to be doctors or lawyers or engineers. what most people want is to make living, support themselves and their families, and have enough time and good fortune to enjoy their lives. We have sold college as a goal to people who don't necessarily need college to have the lives they want. Most jobs that require a four year degree could easily be competently done some one with a two year degree and an apprenticeship. Jobs now advertising for two year graduates, could be done by people with a two year apprenticeship. what is necessary is a bolder and broader approach to training and employment, not better tools of divination to determine who is worthy of what job.

It is morally wrong to use legacy, donation/bribery, biased testing, and unequal primary and secondary education systems to determine who gets to go to college and who does not. And all of those things have a bigger impact on keeping white kids with merit out of school than AA ever has. When your side start kicking up a fuss about those things with all the vigor and passion you do about race, then you can make an honest case for fairness.

I have never defended legacy admissions nor do I believe them to be fair.

And how much posting space here have you dedicated to the elimination of legacies?

I've seen you defend athletic admissions though -- as if they were somehow fair, as if being able to throw a ball really hard means you merit your way into an institution of higher learning.

Where? in what context? because i can tell you now how I feel on the subject.

GO TARHEELS!!!!

Class of '87 here.

I was not a jock and I took no no-show classes the entire time I was in attendance at UNC.

I have been following these shenanigans since the story broke and quite frankly, I am pissed.

The AS/AAS program isn't to blame for this and it certainly was not in this alone. But you won't be hearing anything from the "Rocks for Jocks" or "Physics for Poets" hard sciences departments, the "Math Class for Muscle Heads" contingent or the Taco Bell Spanish or French Fry French sections in the foreign Language departments.

The academics offered to "student athletes" at power house universities across this country are a joke and everyone knows it. But everyone just winks at the problem and then root root roots the home team to the final four.

And dont get me wrong. I love sports and I love winning and I love the Tarheels and the University, but this shit has got to stop.

Time for minor league basketball and football to take over supplying the pros with players and ending the lie that in the athletic scholarship.

My concern is not for "White kids". My concern is that smart kids of certain races (Asian and White) are penalised and discriminated against because someone believes racist selection policies are not just not morally wrong, but morally laudable.

LOL

Oops. Sorry.

So by including the Asian kids, that makes it alright then? Tell me, how many Asian students are being kept out of school?

But all that I could take, if people were honest that the selection policies really did discriminate by race. But the defenders don't even admit to that, even when presented with incontrovertible evidence, and even when they think it would be a-okay to discriminate by race anyway.

To prove racial discrimination, you have to prove that the individual because of the group membership was discriminated against. That only make sense if membership in this group is a disadvantage. When most of the people in the group are also most of the people on campus, that's a pretty hard thing to prove. You need some sympathetic appointed judges, usually with Rs behind their names, for that to go through.

If the defenders could at least be honest with themselves that affirmative action discriminates, by race, against Asians and Whites and that they're okay with this racial discrimination, that'd be a start.

How hurt have whites been by not being able to attend predominately white institutions?

 

[Kharakov]

All children should be raised, not by their biological parents, but by parents of other races, nationalities, and religions. You might end up with everyone teaching kids secular naturalism instead of "our group is the best".

 

[Toni]

Why do you assume that students recruited from Chicago and Milwaukee schools are unable to complete their course work? Why do you believe that the admissions standards are different for students from Chicago and Milwaukee? In fact, mist state universities have HIGHER admissions standards for students from other states.

The truth is that you really don't know what you are talking about.

What on earth are you talking about? Did I mention Chicago or Milwaukee? I don't even know where Milwaukee is. Where on earth did I say admission standards were different for these students?

Apparently, I followed a thread differently than you did.

Why do you believe that unqualified students are being admitted to universities (aside from some 'student athletes' where I will agree with you there. That is a travesty that began when those kids were toddlers but that's a different subject)?

Why do you believe that top qualifying students: with top GPAs, high test scores, etc. are not being admitted to any university? Probably not every university, but that's no tragedy. Because, let me tell you, even students with perfect GPAs and perfect test scores do not get into every single school they apply to. Nor should they. Being able to perform well on a test does not translate into making wise decisions about what schools will best meet your future needs. Not at 17 or 18.

 

[Metaphor]

And how much posting space here have you dedicated to the elimination of legacies?

If we both agree, how much posting space do you expect to be taken up? Shall we start a few threads talking about how we agree?

How much space needs to be taken up by my condemning slavery? Or is it perhaps that we already agree slavery was morally wrong so it doesn't need to be talked about?

Time for minor league basketball and football to take over supplying the pros with players and ending the lie that in the athletic scholarship.

If you don't support them, then I was mistaken in thinking you did. I'll wear that.

So by including the Asian kids, that makes it alright then?

It makes what alright? I don't defend policies that discriminate by race. It doesn't matter which races are being discriminated against. In fact, if I only objected to racial preferences when it harms or benefits certain races, that would make me the racist.

But you see, I'm not the racist. I want people to stop discriminating by race.

Tell me, how many Asian students are being kept out of school?

If a single Asian person is kept out, or goes to a lower-preference school, because of racial discrimination against her, that is one too many.

To prove racial discrimination, you have to prove that the individual because of the group membership was discriminated against.

No, that's what you'd need to do to prove an individual case of racial discrimination. Systemic racial discrimination in the aggregate can be proven from the admissions statistics of certain universities and from the MCAT data.

And when you see that Asians have a lower chance of admission when they have the same MCAT score and GPA as a White person, and a much lower chance of admission when they have the same MCAT and GPA as a Black or Latino, the discrimination is obvious, unless you propose that the schools are putting huge weight on non MCAT/non-GPA criteria, and that Blacks and Latinos are hugely superior in this non-MCAT/non-GPA criteria compared to Whites and Asians.

That only make sense if membership in this group is a disadvantage. When most of the people in the group are also most of the people on campus, that's a pretty hard thing to prove. You need some sympathetic appointed judges, usually with Rs behind their names, for that to go through.

I don't know what it is you're saying.

If an Asian student needs a higher GPA and a higher MCAT score to get the same chance of admission as a nonAsian student, that means the Asian student is being discriminated against by race, and it doesn't matter if the incoming class is 1% Asian or 50% Asian or 90% Asian.

How hurt have whites been by not being able to attend predominately white institutions?

Every White who is not able to attend an institution because she was discriminated against because of her race has been hurt by that school's racist admissions policies.

White people are not all alike, Athena. They are only all alike to people who think of any individual as an indistinguishable and interchangeable part of the whole racial grouping. Discriminating against some people by race does not help other people who have been discriminated against by race. It just makes everyone worse off.

 

[Metaphor]

Apparently, I followed a thread differently than you did.

I'll say. And you continue to do it below.

Why do you believe that unqualified students are being admitted to universities

I didn't say anything like that. I was discussing with Athena and laughing dog that even if you had infinite slots, admitting some people to university would be a waste of everyone's time.

Why do you believe that top qualifying students: with top GPAs, high test scores, etc. are not being admitted to any university? Probably not every university, but that's no tragedy. Because, let me tell you, even students with perfect GPAs and perfect test scores do not get into every single school they apply to. Nor should they. Being able to perform well on a test does not translate into making wise decisions about what schools will best meet your future needs. Not at 17 or 18.

I don't believe that top students aren't admitted to any university. I don't know what makes you think I do think that.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

the problems of slots is first and foremost a problem of scarcity. Seldom if ever will the opponents of Affirmative Action bring this up because that isn't problem with AA. Their problem with AA is a fear that their side is losing something, having something stolen from them, and the big bad (blacks, Latinos, Vietnamese, etc.), those funny looking people who are (lazier, dumber, sneakier, etc) are the culprits in this scheme.

It's partially a matter of scarcity--and the reason we don't bring it up is because it's so obvious. Rather, we talk about the effects--qualified people excluded at the expense of less qualified people.

However, it's not only a matter of scarcity, but rather of dilution of quality. When you admit a bunch of underqualified people you either have to flunk them out or the quality of your graduates will decline. The quality of a company's product will decline.

I think of it like this. On my days off back when my kid was a kid, I would have him and would sometimes babysit four of his little cousins. At lunch time I would prepare five sandwiches, but sometimes I would have seven or eight kids for lunch because the first five would invite the kids from across the street and down the road. I didn't set up any kind of system to feed only the deserving five. I did something radical. I made more sandwiches.

The makings of additional sandwiches are easy to have at hand. You can't store educations or jobs, though, so you can't simply pull out more if you find a need for them. It takes time to scale things up and that cost will persist for quite some time whether the need remains or not. You don't admit 20,000 this year, 30,000 the next and 25,000 the year after that. If you think the demand and the money will be there for the future you might increase the capacity to 25,000 but you still won't admit the 30,000.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Why?

And of course, some schools and universities restrict their incoming populations out of prestige, to guard their brand. But it's still morally wrong to use race in admissions policy, whether you're guarding a brand or not.

And some institutions practiced a form of AA for decades (and still do). Its called geographic diversity. Funny how no one seems to mind that. Hmmm.

Almost all "diversity" systems other than outreach are a means to discriminate while pretending not to.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Why do you assume that students recruited from Chicago and Milwaukee schools are unable to complete their course work? Why do you believe that the admissions standards are different for students from Chicago and Milwaukee? In fact, mist state universities have HIGHER admissions standards for students from other states.

The truth is that you really don't know what you are talking about.

Until the universities quit publishing the data we could see they were discriminating heavily.


Now all we see are things like the effects of California banning AA and the proliferation of measures meant to discriminate while pretending not to--the big one being admitting the top x% of the graduating class of state high schools.

 

[laughing dog]

If you start a university course but are unable to finish it, everyone's time has been wasted. If you don't pass a course, you haven't learned the course content. Presumably, learning and understanding the course content is what makes education valuable, unless you think going to lectures and not understanding anything and not learning any skills and not doing any work would lead to the same outcomes as someone who graduated first class honours?

I think we have a much different view of education. One can certainly learn much from a course even though one does not pass the course. I would think it rather rare than one does not learn any skills when one fails a course. Real education is not about grades or assessment - it comes from learning about the world and oneself.

Whether 'geographic diversity' is a laudable goal is debatable (although I don't really know what it is, so it could be clearly right or clearly wrong). Whether it is achieved, or attempted to be achieved, in a way that is laudable depends on specifics. Funny, how you do not give AA the same benefit of the doubt.

So I can't respond to whether 'geographic diversity' is affirmative action or not and whether it's unjust or not.

Funny, how you do not give AA the same benefit of the doubt.

 

[none]

...
Discrimination by race and gender are already against the law.

apparently not

 

[Toni]

I'll say. And you continue to do it below.

Why do you believe that unqualified students are being admitted to universities

I didn't say anything like that. I was discussing with Athena and laughing dog that even if you had infinite slots, admitting some people to university would be a waste of everyone's time.

Why do you believe that top qualifying students: with top GPAs, high test scores, etc. are not being admitted to any university? Probably not every university, but that's no tragedy. Because, let me tell you, even students with perfect GPAs and perfect test scores do not get into every single school they apply to. Nor should they. Being able to perform well on a test does not translate into making wise decisions about what schools will best meet your future needs. Not at 17 or 18.

I don't believe that top students aren't admitted to any university. I don't know what makes you think I do think that.

Your continual insistance that white and Asian students are being discriminated against in admissions, despite the fact that white and Asian students comprise the two largest demographics at institutions of higher learning.

 

[laughing dog]

Allowing race (or gender, or any other arbitrary and immutable variable unrelated to performance) to influence a selection decision is morally wrong.

The fact you believe it to be always morally wrong does not make it so.

Individuals are hurt by it and society suffers for it.

Individuals are hurt by lots of things, including actions that are morally right. And your claim that society suffers for AA is dogmatic nonsense since it is not necessarily true.

 

[Metaphor]

Funny, how you do not give AA the same benefit of the doubt.

The AA operating in American law and medicine graduate schools does not get any benefit of the doubt, because I've seen how those programs operate and I have evidence of the discrimination by race.

- - - Updated - - -

The fact you believe it to be always morally wrong does not make it so.

Individuals are hurt by it and society suffers for it.

Individuals are hurt by lots of things, including actions that are morally right. And your claim that society suffers for AA is dogmatic nonsense since it is not necessarily true.

When is arbitrary discrimination by race morally right?

Society suffers whenever selection decisions are based or influenced by arbitrary criteria.

 

[Metaphor]

I'll say. And you continue to do it below.



I didn't say anything like that. I was discussing with Athena and laughing dog that even if you had infinite slots, admitting some people to university would be a waste of everyone's time.

Why do you believe that top qualifying students: with top GPAs, high test scores, etc. are not being admitted to any university? Probably not every university, but that's no tragedy. Because, let me tell you, even students with perfect GPAs and perfect test scores do not get into every single school they apply to. Nor should they. Being able to perform well on a test does not translate into making wise decisions about what schools will best meet your future needs. Not at 17 or 18.

I don't believe that top students aren't admitted to any university. I don't know what makes you think I do think that.

Your continual insistance that white and Asian students are being discriminated against in admissions, despite the fact that white and Asian students comprise the two largest demographics at institutions of higher learning.

They're the two largest demographics because they're the two highest achieving groups, by grades and aptitude scores.

But of course they're discriminated against. If you hold constant GPA and aptitude scores, Asians have a much lower chance of admission compared to Blacks. Asians should have greater representation than they actually currently do.

I'm sorry Toni but I'm tired of something that is either your statistical ignorance or your wilful obtuseness.

 

[Axulus]

Legacy admissions, while wrong, aren't that big a part of the picture.

Even legacy admissions can sometimes help everyone else more than they harm: the parents usually made donations to the school and will continue to do so, the legacy admission pays full tuition, and therefore the school has more resources to improve education for everyone else at the school and maybe even have enough to open up some additional slots. As long as it is being done by a private institution I can live with it. If all these same things can be achieved without legacy admissions, that is a definite improvement. But we do live in the real world after all, where there are tradeoffs.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

It is another case of people thinking in terms of groups instead of individuals. You see, if we already have lots of asians admitted then it isnt wrong to exclude another asian because she is asian and the other candidate is black, or something like that.

This fixation on group membership instead of individual merit and content of character is the same that creates the very racism complained of in the first place.

 

[Axulus]

@ Jolly Penguin, Metaphor..
yeah, affirmative action ain't perfect to you but it is better than your alternative that you have offered.

It's not a case of it being 'perfect'. It's a case of it being morally wrong.

You can't fight a disease with more of the disease.

I would say that it is discrimination, but it is based on merit, which is a perfectly acceptable form of discrimination - a new family is unfamiliar with the area and will therefore receive the most benefit from the introduction, plus it gives an opportunity to form a new relationship with someone who currently doesn't have any.

Affirmative action would be like only going up to a black family and giving them a tour of the neighborhood in some sort of attempt to make up for the crimes of the past, while saying a white family can fend for themselves.

 

[Toni]

I'll say. And you continue to do it below.



I didn't say anything like that. I was discussing with Athena and laughing dog that even if you had infinite slots, admitting some people to university would be a waste of everyone's time.

Why do you believe that top qualifying students: with top GPAs, high test scores, etc. are not being admitted to any university? Probably not every university, but that's no tragedy. Because, let me tell you, even students with perfect GPAs and perfect test scores do not get into every single school they apply to. Nor should they. Being able to perform well on a test does not translate into making wise decisions about what schools will best meet your future needs. Not at 17 or 18.

I don't believe that top students aren't admitted to any university. I don't know what makes you think I do think that.

Your continual insistance that white and Asian students are being discriminated against in admissions, despite the fact that white and Asian students comprise the two largest demographics at institutions of higher learning.

They're the two largest demographics because they're the two highest achieving groups, by grades and aptitude scores.

But of course they're discriminated against. If you hold constant GPA and aptitude scores, Asians have a much lower chance of admission compared to Blacks. Asians should have greater representation than they actually currently do.

I'm sorry Toni but I'm tired of something that is either your statistical ignorance or your wilful obtuseness.

I am clearly not a statistician. So you believe that no low scoring Asian or white students are admitted to universities and grad programs?

Do you know whether Asian and white prospective students apply to more or fewer different programs compared with black students or Hispanic students? If students from a particular group, say: left handed red heads--applied to, on average, say 12 schools but right handed red heads applied to 4 schools, would you expect he right handed and left handed red heads have similar rates of acceptance? Assume normal distribution of grades, scores for the stated acceptance criteria of the caliber of schools.

Do you believe that test scores/grades within one standard deviation actually are predictive of different levels of academic achievement?

 

[none]

duress comes to mind Axulus.
there might be another word that is better though.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

If we both agree, how much posting space do you expect to be taken up? Shall we start a few threads talking about how we agree?

How much space needs to be taken up by my condemning slavery? Or is it perhaps that we already agree slavery was morally wrong so it doesn't need to be talked about?

Time for minor league basketball and football to take over supplying the pros with players and ending the lie that in the athletic scholarship.

If you don't support them, then I was mistaken in thinking you did. I'll wear that.

So by including the Asian kids, that makes it alright then?

It makes what alright? I don't defend policies that discriminate by race. It doesn't matter which races are being discriminated against. In fact, if I only objected to racial preferences when it harms or benefits certain races, that would make me the racist.

But you see, I'm not the racist. I want people to stop discriminating by race.

Tell me, how many Asian students are being kept out of school?

If a single Asian person is kept out, or goes to a lower-preference school, because of racial discrimination against her, that is one too many.

To prove racial discrimination, you have to prove that the individual because of the group membership was discriminated against.

No, that's what you'd need to do to prove an individual case of racial discrimination. Systemic racial discrimination in the aggregate can be proven from the admissions statistics of certain universities and from the MCAT data.

And when you see that Asians have a lower chance of admission when they have the same MCAT score and GPA as a White person, and a much lower chance of admission when they have the same MCAT and GPA as a Black or Latino, the discrimination is obvious, unless you propose that the schools are putting huge weight on non MCAT/non-GPA criteria, and that Blacks and Latinos are hugely superior in this non-MCAT/non-GPA criteria compared to Whites and Asians.

That only make sense if membership in this group is a disadvantage. When most of the people in the group are also most of the people on campus, that's a pretty hard thing to prove. You need some sympathetic appointed judges, usually with Rs behind their names, for that to go through.

I don't know what it is you're saying.

If an Asian student needs a higher GPA and a higher MCAT score to get the same chance of admission as a nonAsian student, that means the Asian student is being discriminated against by race, and it doesn't matter if the incoming class is 1% Asian or 50% Asian or 90% Asian.

How hurt have whites been by not being able to attend predominately white institutions?

Every White who is not able to attend an institution because she was discriminated against because of her race has been hurt by that school's racist admissions policies.

White people are not all alike, Athena. They are only all alike to people who think of any individual as an indistinguishable and interchangeable part of the whole racial grouping. Discriminating against some people by race does not help other people who have been discriminated against by race. It just makes everyone worse off.

I don't think white people are all alike

I have never said all white people are alike.

I am also not your personification of every stereotype of the angry black militant out to take down the man. I am woman living in small southern city, hustling jobs, making payroll, worrying about her kid, her brother, her bills, and her community.

I am not the enemy and "defeating me" on a message board won't make your positions right or righteous.