6 ms·

Does Diversity Punish Asians, Poor Whites and Others?

22 points by cwan 16y ago

wdewind 16y ago
Come on. >Asians, unlike blacks and Hispanics, receive no boost in admissions. Just not true. >The admissions disadvantage was greatest for those in leadership positions in these activities or those winning honors and awards. "Being an officer or winning awards" for such career-oriented activities as junior ROTC, 4-H, or Future Farmers of America, say Espenshade and Radford..." SHOCK! Blue collar "career oriented" awards don't count for institutions who primarily push people into white collar organizations? This reads like it was written in 1992.
- fanboy123 16y ago
  How is it not true? When ranking avg test scores & gpa the average asian and white scores are usually higher than other ethnicities at top tier universties. I dont see why things like this always come up. That there is preference exhibited during admissions is fact. It is by design. The real question is if these practices have the desired effect on society.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
lkrubner 16y ago
It is surprising, and disappointing, that in 2010 we still need to have a conversation about whether diversity is important. I'm especially surprised to see this come up on Hacker News, rather than some fringe site. This debate has been going on for 40 years now. I would think by now its been established that diversity has importance in its own right, not just in what it does for individuals who are included on campus for non-traditional reasons, but also for all the other people on campus. Certainly, diversity on campus is important for everyone who aspires to any kind of leadership position, since any leader today will be leading in a diverse environment.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- jerf 16y ago
  Few would argue diversity isn't important. It is not terribly well established that cutting along racial boundaries is the correct way to establish diversity. Shouldn't we give affirmative-action style bonuses to conservatives, since they are grossly underrepresented on campus? After all, everyone ought to agree that students should be exposed to such common viewpoints; whether you think that's because student education is being limited for lack of exposure to their different viewpoints or whether you consider the ideas so transparently false that students can be safely exposed to the ideas so that they can be shown how transparently false they are, using the same racial-diversity logic says that we ought to be giving huge conservative bonuses for admission and tenure positions. What advantage is "diversity" if the result is merely a rainbow of people all identically singing the praises of the white-liberal-sourced diversity ideals? The affirmative action for diversity logic does not trivially obviously cover skin color issues. It argues for ideological diversity, then slides in race as a proxy for ideology when you aren't looking. I consider the entire race-based affirmative action line of logic pretty offensively racist if you actually analyze it. (I'm not arguing in favor of conservative affirmative action bonuses. Look more closely if you think I just did.)
  - jeb 16y ago
    A black person cannot hide his blackness. Black people are currently perceived as lower class. Making it easier for them to enter universities means that they get to be upper class easier (it's not easy to break the class barrier). What this implies is that there will be a diverse range of skin color across all classes, reducing the perception that black skin implies lower class. Doing so only for conservatives does nothing to help this goal.
    - jerf 16y ago
      You may believe that, it may be a good argument. But it isn't the usual argument advanced in favor of affirmative action, as it is entirely novel to me.
jerf 16y ago
It is mathematically impossible to privilege one group without "disprivileging" another in a zero-sum game like college admissions. The question of whether affirmative action "punishes" some people isn't even interesting, the question is a borderline-tautological "yes". The question is, is that what we want to do? And even if historically the answer was "yes", is it still what we want to do? And what do we want to do in the future? I'm not commenting on the answer to those questions, subtly or otherwise. (Except inasmuch that some people would rather we not ask them at all and just take various answers as axiomatically true without examination.)
- jeb 16y ago
  The effect of having 5% black people in colleges will have a much wider benefit for the entire society, than if you converted those 5% into asians and whites. Yes, those 5% may become factory managers or programmers or something similar, which is great. But those 5% black people, will act as role models for the other 30 million black people that currently form the largest social underclass, and are responsible for a lot of social problems at the moment. So I'd say that the second goal, that of creating an educated black populace, creating a 'cosby family' that the current underclass can look up to, is more important than creating another bland middle-manager.
  - cema 16y ago
    1. I do not know how we calculate what has a "much wider benefit for the entire society". 2. But I know that if we base our decisions on the (elusive) benefit to the society versus justice, we are taking a step towards a totalitarian system. This is not where we want to go, and (I think) not what the proponents of the Affirmative Action intended. 3. I am sure there must be ways to help the underprivileged individuals, and maybe underprivileged strata, of our society without having to resort to such actions.
    - jeb 16y ago
      To your last point - you know the untouchable caste in india? Imagine you have a poor untouchable caste, and you have a poor of the highest caste. You want to help them both, so you give them both some amount of money. Even when the untouchable creates some successful business, he is still untouchable. That's the same problem you have - your society strongly associates black with negative. That stereotype will continue to exist, unless there is a proper movement of blacks into the standard college educated strata. Otherwise, they stay down in the 'untouchable' caste. The child of a white person who was once poor does not have this stigma anymore. But the black persons child is still stuck with the stigma, because it's part of his skin-color. That's the problem - your lower class is also the black class, and if you want to do things only the 'just' way, then it will remain that way for a long time to come. And by the way, if you want equal admissions, then accept that you will not get into those schools because chinese immigrants and jewish people will probably get the best scores. So please, advocate merit based only or advocate that the school can choose, and accept that it can choose blacks.
wushupork 16y ago
So in order to not be screwed by the system, should my hapa kids self identify as asian or white?
- patio11 16y ago
  It won't really matter, though you should probably take pains to avoid looking like Just Another Smart Asian Kid. I wrote a glowing review for my alma mater about a student I interviewed which focused on her cheerleading, sense of humor, and overcoming of societal discrimination, because "smart Asian worked hard and wants to go to med school" is not a strong marketing move. (Incidentally, you know how culture sometimes gets in the way of academic success? In this case, a cultural background which places emphasis on hard work and scholastic achievement is a tremendous impediment to maximizing for what admissions officers actually care about.) In the alternative, you can have your kids apply to a Japanese university, where they will be judged by their test scores without regard to their race.
- rsheridan6 16y ago
  Try to pass them off as Hispanic.
  - wushupork 16y ago
    funny you mention that as many asian/white mixes end up looking very Hispanic
alexandros 16y ago
There have been many formulations of the root problem in such cases, Campbell's formulation fits best here. Campbell's law: The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbells_Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbells_Law
jeb 16y ago
Come on guys. Let's imagine a hypothetical situation where blacks are dumber than anyone else. Blacks are ALREADY at the bottom of the socio-economic classes, they are already responsible for a majority of crime, what EXACTLY do you think would be the result of a fair admission process? These people who are at the bottom will stay even more firmly entrenched at the bottom, will commit more crime and continue to justify the stereotypes. If you believe that blacks are dumber than anyone else (like the linked article), then you have to support affirmative action, otherwise you are setting up a society segregated by intelligence, which will also directly correspond to skin color. So blacks will always be at the bottom, and people of black skin will automatically fall into that category with very little chance of getting out, even if they are clever, as there will be many people justifying the opposite stereotype. Imagine all colleges had 5% less space for students. That's the only effect of affirmative action. If you want to campaign for something, then campaign that 5% more students should be taken in - one for every student who got in as a result of affirmative action. That's a win-win.
- patio11 16y ago
  Imagine all colleges had 5% less space for students. That's the only effect of affirmative action. It isn't, for the same reason that having one drinking fountain in twenty marked Whites Only has salience far in excess of a 5% decrease in the supply of drinking fountains.
  - jeb 16y ago
    So what you are saying is that discriminating in some way has a strong effect on the perception of society in general? Yes, there is this theoretical moral debate about what is right and what is wrong, but the real effect of doing what you say is right, would result in universities of only asians and whites, and the blacks mostly doing manual labour. Is THAT right?
    - patio11 16y ago
      Affirmative action matters for the most selective colleges in the United States but very little for your average state school, where there is little to no selection pressure. (It is the public policy of the United States that you can get a tertiary degree -- and we will pay for it -- if you have a pulse.) There are many doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, etc etc, who do not have a degree from Harvard/MIT/etc. The hypothetical, exaggerated dystopian universe in which the most selective ~25 institutions drop to ~2% black doesn't resemble an Orwell novel.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
cantastoria 16y ago
I often wondered what psychological effects these diversity programs have on those who are supposedly benefiting from them. Do they walk around campus thinking to themselves "I'm here because I'm black"? This goes double for those minority students who would've been accepted without preferential treatment.
- jeb 16y ago
  I think that a lot of them prefer to be in the school and wonder if they are there because they are black than not be there at all.
  - cantastoria 16y ago
    Oh I'm sure this is true on some level but it must be difficult to have to constantly deal with the assumption that you're there because of your race. It's just another level of scrutiny, and I guess racism, which is ironically created by the program meant to destroy it.
    - jeb 16y ago
      It's about the same as constantly having to deal with the assumption you are there for geographical reasons, because you speak with a southern accent.
      - cantastoria 16y ago
        Yes but there are few (if any) universities that have a "southern accent" based affirmative action policy. If such a policy existed it would exactly the same.
        jeb 16y ago
        All the schools have geographical quotas. They don't just allow people from one region to come in, no matter how great they are. Was there not a problem with one of those schools where 40% where jewish when admission was only based on test-scores?
CoryMathews 16y ago
Does it even matter what race someone puts down on those? On the last US census I put my race as human, although technically (and visually) I am white, but my background is such a mutt, or not traced, that it doesn't really matter anyway. On top of that I grew up in a city thats over 60% (south Texas) Hispanic. That will change my views to be more "Hispanic like" vs someone with the exact same racial qualities living in, say, NY. Hell when I go to home depot they say things in English then Spanish on the intercoms. It also seems lately that half the people I meet are half Mexican and half white. What should they put? Every one I have asked puts Hispanic because in general they get more that way. I guess it comes down to an obviously flawed system. Possibly "diversify" based on income, or location over race.
- jeb 16y ago
  I'm not sure you get the point of 'diversity'. The U.S has a class-based system that is very very strongly correlated with skin-color. Dark skin -> lower class, worker. White skin -> upper class, college educated. The system is there to spread dark skin across all strata of society, breaking the stereotype that a particular skin color belongs in a particular lower strata.
  - cantastoria 16y ago
    The system is there to spread dark skin across all strata of society, breaking the stereotype that a particular skin color belongs in a particular lower strata. The problem with this though is that whites have to pretend that the system doesn't exist for it work. If dark-skinned students are allowed in because of a well known preference program the stereotype is in fact reinforced.
    - jeb 16y ago
      In the short term it is reinforced. But on the longer term, you create a wide array of dark skinned college educated people who have college level jobs. College educated tend to breed college educated, and family/relatives will tend to be college educated. So in the medium term, the current state that the black community is in will change towards a more intellectual and educated one.
sliverstorm 16y ago
> an estimated 40-50 percent of (students in Universities) categorized as black are Afro-Caribbean or African immigrants, or the children of such immigrants That's interesting. I'm curious what the cause for this is.
- jeb 16y ago
  That's because the people from those areas did not face the travails that american blacks went through. I believe that that slavery thing and back-of-the-bus thing 40 years ago, and no-blacks-on-mtv 20 years ago left its mark. The immigrants are coming in not feeling like they are the bottom of the barrel.
  - cema 16y ago
    I suspect the reason is closer to what you wrote in the second paragraph than the first paragraph. Personal point of view, longing for education and hard work may be accounting for most of the immigrants' success, and vice versa. This attitude, imho, does stem (perhaps to a very large extent) from the racial situation in the USA before the 1960s, however, it is not its direct consequence and, moreover, that situation was not unique to the US (especially if we go back to "that slavery thing", widespread in the West Indies and indeed around the world, unfortunately). Incidentally, while I appear to mostly disagree with you on this issue, I had to upvote you back to neutral (1 point) because I thought your comment was legitimate and thoughtful and did not deserve a downvote.
    - jeb 16y ago
      Votes don't matter, doing the right thing is not a popularity contest. People who are raised in a lower class from which there is no breaking out become apathetic. In the west-indies or in Africa, even though they were poor, they could always become rich. They could always become upper class just by working hard and making money. In the U.S, this was impossible until very very recently, because just by being black, you could not be upper class. If MTV would not play black music, then what white man would say 'sir' to a black man in the 80s? When there is no opportunity for you to advance, you become apathetic and resigned to your fate. It's difficult to work hard when you have already been told you'll never get promoted. Immigrant blacks don't see the ceiling. As more immigrant blacks come in, the american black children are looking up to these people, and the attitudes are changing. But this is a slow process, and would be accelerated by increasing the average educational level of the American black.
carbocation 16y ago
For what it's worth, this data is from 1997. (E.g., see table 3.4 from the book being discussed, No longer separate, not yet equal: race and class in elite college admission, by Espenshade et al.) Also - and this is not exactly a problem, just a methodological feature to be aware of - it appears that they produced their models by aggregating the data together across schools.
mkramlich 16y ago
This is one of the taboo subjects on the Internet where it's possible to say something that is factually true and yet you can be downvoted into oblivion if it is "not PC", so watch out folks.
mkramlich 16y ago
I wonder if anyone has ever seriously proposed adding a rule to the NBA (US professional basketball league) that requires a minimum of say 75% of the players to be white? In order that the diversity of the team more accurately reflect the racial composition of the US, and to be more fair to white people. Also require that say 12% of all swimming teams are black, and so on. Just food for thought, not serious proposals.
- jeb 16y ago
  How about making the elite institutions ONLY merit based. Then it would become 60% jewish and 30% asian, 8% white and the remaining 2% shared by the other minorities. Is that okay with you?
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    It's hard to be opposed to merit-only requirements. It's not clear to me why we have to distort anything if we truly want to live in a world that is blind to color, gender, age, etc. can you imagine if MLK's famous speech was this instead: "I want my children to be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Unless applying for college. Or grants. Or aid from the government. Or (...)"
    - jeb 16y ago
      Then say that. When you make your arguments, don't say "let's get rid of affirmative action". Say "let's make the admission process merit-based only". Of course, you realise what you're saying then? You're saying you want 30% of all students in all elite colleges to likely come from new york. That's going to create a very monotonous, one-track kind of thought coming out of those places. Those schools that are currently the best in the world, will start producing similar thinking people with little exposure to diversity of thought or diversity of individuals. Is that what you want? You are willing to fundamentally change the characters of these schools to meet some criteria of 'fair' that basically only uses a single attribute to judge people?
  - mkramlich 16y ago

22 points by cwan 16y ago

Come on. >Asians, unlike blacks and Hispanics, receive no boost in admissions. Just not true. >The admissions disadvantage was greatest for those in leadership positions in these activities or those winning honors and awards. "Being an officer or winning awards" for such career-oriented activities as junior ROTC, 4-H, or Future Farmers of America, say Espenshade and Radford..." SHOCK! Blue collar "career oriented" awards don't count for institutions who primarily push people into white collar organizations? This reads like it was written in 1992.

fanboy123 16y ago
How is it not true? When ranking avg test scores & gpa the average asian and white scores are usually higher than other ethnicities at top tier universties. I dont see why things like this always come up. That there is preference exhibited during admissions is fact. It is by design. The real question is if these practices have the desired effect on society.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

lkrubner 16y ago

It is surprising, and disappointing, that in 2010 we still need to have a conversation about whether diversity is important. I'm especially surprised to see this come up on Hacker News, rather than some fringe site. This debate has been going on for 40 years now. I would think by now its been established that diversity has importance in its own right, not just in what it does for individuals who are included on campus for non-traditional reasons, but also for all the other people on campus. Certainly, diversity on campus is important for everyone who aspires to any kind of leadership position, since any leader today will be leading in a diverse environment.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
jerf 16y ago
Few would argue diversity isn't important. It is not terribly well established that cutting along racial boundaries is the correct way to establish diversity. Shouldn't we give affirmative-action style bonuses to conservatives, since they are grossly underrepresented on campus? After all, everyone ought to agree that students should be exposed to such common viewpoints; whether you think that's because student education is being limited for lack of exposure to their different viewpoints or whether you consider the ideas so transparently false that students can be safely exposed to the ideas so that they can be shown how transparently false they are, using the same racial-diversity logic says that we ought to be giving huge conservative bonuses for admission and tenure positions. What advantage is "diversity" if the result is merely a rainbow of people all identically singing the praises of the white-liberal-sourced diversity ideals? The affirmative action for diversity logic does not trivially obviously cover skin color issues. It argues for ideological diversity, then slides in race as a proxy for ideology when you aren't looking. I consider the entire race-based affirmative action line of logic pretty offensively racist if you actually analyze it. (I'm not arguing in favor of conservative affirmative action bonuses. Look more closely if you think I just did.)
- jeb 16y ago
  A black person cannot hide his blackness. Black people are currently perceived as lower class. Making it easier for them to enter universities means that they get to be upper class easier (it's not easy to break the class barrier). What this implies is that there will be a diverse range of skin color across all classes, reducing the perception that black skin implies lower class. Doing so only for conservatives does nothing to help this goal.
  - jerf 16y ago
    You may believe that, it may be a good argument. But it isn't the usual argument advanced in favor of affirmative action, as it is entirely novel to me.

jerf 16y ago

It is mathematically impossible to privilege one group without "disprivileging" another in a zero-sum game like college admissions. The question of whether affirmative action "punishes" some people isn't even interesting, the question is a borderline-tautological "yes". The question is, is that what we want to do? And even if historically the answer was "yes", is it still what we want to do? And what do we want to do in the future? I'm not commenting on the answer to those questions, subtly or otherwise. (Except inasmuch that some people would rather we not ask them at all and just take various answers as axiomatically true without examination.)

jeb 16y ago
The effect of having 5% black people in colleges will have a much wider benefit for the entire society, than if you converted those 5% into asians and whites. Yes, those 5% may become factory managers or programmers or something similar, which is great. But those 5% black people, will act as role models for the other 30 million black people that currently form the largest social underclass, and are responsible for a lot of social problems at the moment. So I'd say that the second goal, that of creating an educated black populace, creating a 'cosby family' that the current underclass can look up to, is more important than creating another bland middle-manager.
- cema 16y ago
  1. I do not know how we calculate what has a "much wider benefit for the entire society". 2. But I know that if we base our decisions on the (elusive) benefit to the society versus justice, we are taking a step towards a totalitarian system. This is not where we want to go, and (I think) not what the proponents of the Affirmative Action intended. 3. I am sure there must be ways to help the underprivileged individuals, and maybe underprivileged strata, of our society without having to resort to such actions.
  - jeb 16y ago
    To your last point - you know the untouchable caste in india? Imagine you have a poor untouchable caste, and you have a poor of the highest caste. You want to help them both, so you give them both some amount of money. Even when the untouchable creates some successful business, he is still untouchable. That's the same problem you have - your society strongly associates black with negative. That stereotype will continue to exist, unless there is a proper movement of blacks into the standard college educated strata. Otherwise, they stay down in the 'untouchable' caste. The child of a white person who was once poor does not have this stigma anymore. But the black persons child is still stuck with the stigma, because it's part of his skin-color. That's the problem - your lower class is also the black class, and if you want to do things only the 'just' way, then it will remain that way for a long time to come. And by the way, if you want equal admissions, then accept that you will not get into those schools because chinese immigrants and jewish people will probably get the best scores. So please, advocate merit based only or advocate that the school can choose, and accept that it can choose blacks.

wushupork 16y ago

So in order to not be screwed by the system, should my hapa kids self identify as asian or white?

patio11 16y ago
It won't really matter, though you should probably take pains to avoid looking like Just Another Smart Asian Kid. I wrote a glowing review for my alma mater about a student I interviewed which focused on her cheerleading, sense of humor, and overcoming of societal discrimination, because "smart Asian worked hard and wants to go to med school" is not a strong marketing move. (Incidentally, you know how culture sometimes gets in the way of academic success? In this case, a cultural background which places emphasis on hard work and scholastic achievement is a tremendous impediment to maximizing for what admissions officers actually care about.) In the alternative, you can have your kids apply to a Japanese university, where they will be judged by their test scores without regard to their race.
rsheridan6 16y ago
Try to pass them off as Hispanic.
- wushupork 16y ago
  funny you mention that as many asian/white mixes end up looking very Hispanic

alexandros 16y ago

There have been many formulations of the root problem in such cases, Campbell's formulation fits best here. Campbell's law: The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbells_Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbells_Law

jeb 16y ago

Come on guys. Let's imagine a hypothetical situation where blacks are dumber than anyone else. Blacks are ALREADY at the bottom of the socio-economic classes, they are already responsible for a majority of crime, what EXACTLY do you think would be the result of a fair admission process? These people who are at the bottom will stay even more firmly entrenched at the bottom, will commit more crime and continue to justify the stereotypes. If you believe that blacks are dumber than anyone else (like the linked article), then you have to support affirmative action, otherwise you are setting up a society segregated by intelligence, which will also directly correspond to skin color. So blacks will always be at the bottom, and people of black skin will automatically fall into that category with very little chance of getting out, even if they are clever, as there will be many people justifying the opposite stereotype. Imagine all colleges had 5% less space for students. That's the only effect of affirmative action. If you want to campaign for something, then campaign that 5% more students should be taken in - one for every student who got in as a result of affirmative action. That's a win-win.

patio11 16y ago
Imagine all colleges had 5% less space for students. That's the only effect of affirmative action. It isn't, for the same reason that having one drinking fountain in twenty marked Whites Only has salience far in excess of a 5% decrease in the supply of drinking fountains.
- jeb 16y ago
  So what you are saying is that discriminating in some way has a strong effect on the perception of society in general? Yes, there is this theoretical moral debate about what is right and what is wrong, but the real effect of doing what you say is right, would result in universities of only asians and whites, and the blacks mostly doing manual labour. Is THAT right?
  - patio11 16y ago
    Affirmative action matters for the most selective colleges in the United States but very little for your average state school, where there is little to no selection pressure. (It is the public policy of the United States that you can get a tertiary degree -- and we will pay for it -- if you have a pulse.) There are many doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, etc etc, who do not have a degree from Harvard/MIT/etc. The hypothetical, exaggerated dystopian universe in which the most selective ~25 institutions drop to ~2% black doesn't resemble an Orwell novel.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

cantastoria 16y ago

I often wondered what psychological effects these diversity programs have on those who are supposedly benefiting from them. Do they walk around campus thinking to themselves "I'm here because I'm black"? This goes double for those minority students who would've been accepted without preferential treatment.

jeb 16y ago
I think that a lot of them prefer to be in the school and wonder if they are there because they are black than not be there at all.
- cantastoria 16y ago
  Oh I'm sure this is true on some level but it must be difficult to have to constantly deal with the assumption that you're there because of your race. It's just another level of scrutiny, and I guess racism, which is ironically created by the program meant to destroy it.
  - jeb 16y ago
    It's about the same as constantly having to deal with the assumption you are there for geographical reasons, because you speak with a southern accent.
    - cantastoria 16y ago
      Yes but there are few (if any) universities that have a "southern accent" based affirmative action policy. If such a policy existed it would exactly the same.
      - jeb 16y ago
        All the schools have geographical quotas. They don't just allow people from one region to come in, no matter how great they are. Was there not a problem with one of those schools where 40% where jewish when admission was only based on test-scores?

CoryMathews 16y ago

Does it even matter what race someone puts down on those? On the last US census I put my race as human, although technically (and visually) I am white, but my background is such a mutt, or not traced, that it doesn't really matter anyway. On top of that I grew up in a city thats over 60% (south Texas) Hispanic. That will change my views to be more "Hispanic like" vs someone with the exact same racial qualities living in, say, NY. Hell when I go to home depot they say things in English then Spanish on the intercoms. It also seems lately that half the people I meet are half Mexican and half white. What should they put? Every one I have asked puts Hispanic because in general they get more that way. I guess it comes down to an obviously flawed system. Possibly "diversify" based on income, or location over race.

jeb 16y ago
I'm not sure you get the point of 'diversity'. The U.S has a class-based system that is very very strongly correlated with skin-color. Dark skin -> lower class, worker. White skin -> upper class, college educated. The system is there to spread dark skin across all strata of society, breaking the stereotype that a particular skin color belongs in a particular lower strata.
- cantastoria 16y ago
  The system is there to spread dark skin across all strata of society, breaking the stereotype that a particular skin color belongs in a particular lower strata. The problem with this though is that whites have to pretend that the system doesn't exist for it work. If dark-skinned students are allowed in because of a well known preference program the stereotype is in fact reinforced.
  - jeb 16y ago
    In the short term it is reinforced. But on the longer term, you create a wide array of dark skinned college educated people who have college level jobs. College educated tend to breed college educated, and family/relatives will tend to be college educated. So in the medium term, the current state that the black community is in will change towards a more intellectual and educated one.

sliverstorm 16y ago

> an estimated 40-50 percent of (students in Universities) categorized as black are Afro-Caribbean or African immigrants, or the children of such immigrants That's interesting. I'm curious what the cause for this is.

jeb 16y ago
That's because the people from those areas did not face the travails that american blacks went through. I believe that that slavery thing and back-of-the-bus thing 40 years ago, and no-blacks-on-mtv 20 years ago left its mark. The immigrants are coming in not feeling like they are the bottom of the barrel.
- cema 16y ago
  I suspect the reason is closer to what you wrote in the second paragraph than the first paragraph. Personal point of view, longing for education and hard work may be accounting for most of the immigrants' success, and vice versa. This attitude, imho, does stem (perhaps to a very large extent) from the racial situation in the USA before the 1960s, however, it is not its direct consequence and, moreover, that situation was not unique to the US (especially if we go back to "that slavery thing", widespread in the West Indies and indeed around the world, unfortunately). Incidentally, while I appear to mostly disagree with you on this issue, I had to upvote you back to neutral (1 point) because I thought your comment was legitimate and thoughtful and did not deserve a downvote.
  - jeb 16y ago
    Votes don't matter, doing the right thing is not a popularity contest. People who are raised in a lower class from which there is no breaking out become apathetic. In the west-indies or in Africa, even though they were poor, they could always become rich. They could always become upper class just by working hard and making money. In the U.S, this was impossible until very very recently, because just by being black, you could not be upper class. If MTV would not play black music, then what white man would say 'sir' to a black man in the 80s? When there is no opportunity for you to advance, you become apathetic and resigned to your fate. It's difficult to work hard when you have already been told you'll never get promoted. Immigrant blacks don't see the ceiling. As more immigrant blacks come in, the american black children are looking up to these people, and the attitudes are changing. But this is a slow process, and would be accelerated by increasing the average educational level of the American black.

carbocation 16y ago

For what it's worth, this data is from 1997. (E.g., see table 3.4 from the book being discussed, No longer separate, not yet equal: race and class in elite college admission, by Espenshade et al.) Also - and this is not exactly a problem, just a methodological feature to be aware of - it appears that they produced their models by aggregating the data together across schools.

mkramlich 16y ago

This is one of the taboo subjects on the Internet where it's possible to say something that is factually true and yet you can be downvoted into oblivion if it is "not PC", so watch out folks.

mkramlich 16y ago

I wonder if anyone has ever seriously proposed adding a rule to the NBA (US professional basketball league) that requires a minimum of say 75% of the players to be white? In order that the diversity of the team more accurately reflect the racial composition of the US, and to be more fair to white people. Also require that say 12% of all swimming teams are black, and so on. Just food for thought, not serious proposals.

jeb 16y ago
How about making the elite institutions ONLY merit based. Then it would become 60% jewish and 30% asian, 8% white and the remaining 2% shared by the other minorities. Is that okay with you?
- mkramlich 16y ago
  It's hard to be opposed to merit-only requirements. It's not clear to me why we have to distort anything if we truly want to live in a world that is blind to color, gender, age, etc. can you imagine if MLK's famous speech was this instead: "I want my children to be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Unless applying for college. Or grants. Or aid from the government. Or (...)"
  - jeb 16y ago
    Then say that. When you make your arguments, don't say "let's get rid of affirmative action". Say "let's make the admission process merit-based only". Of course, you realise what you're saying then? You're saying you want 30% of all students in all elite colleges to likely come from new york. That's going to create a very monotonous, one-track kind of thought coming out of those places. Those schools that are currently the best in the world, will start producing similar thinking people with little exposure to diversity of thought or diversity of individuals. Is that what you want? You are willing to fundamentally change the characters of these schools to meet some criteria of 'fair' that basically only uses a single attribute to judge people?
- mkramlich 16y ago