5 ms·

America is such a racist country that even when they try to stop being racist they do it in the most racist way possible. >You're black and applying to college

America is such a racist country that even when they try to stop being racist they do it in the most racist way possible. >You're black and applying to college? You're obviously stupid [0] and we'll add 200 SAT points to your application. Oh no, we'd never add points on means based testing, we'd end up having the poors in Harvard if we did. Why are you asking? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idpevmeoK1A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idpevmeoK1A

flatiron 4y ago
Meritocracy has its issues as well. A lot of people got 200 points from private schools and tutoring that may not be available to a lot of the disenfranchised.
- telotortium 4y ago
  I would agree, but it's not like Harvard will refrain from preferring black candidates from elite private schools, where the staff definitely know how to direct students to tutoring for SAT, over white students from those same schools.
- pookha 4y ago
  Why should anyone be discriminated against strictly by skin color? That's insane and racist.
  - ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
    Equality is out, equity is in.
- PubliusMI 4y ago
  It's not the private schools and tutoring that impacted the test scores... It's the knowledge and talent caused by those things...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
BoorishBears 4y ago
It's weird that people who complain about these things don't complain about legacy applications when: - they're a practice originally designed to keep up out Jews and Catholics (not in a veiled "politically correct" way, that's what they were openly for: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23055549 https://www.jstor.org/stable/23055549) - the legacies they uphold were established at a time where blacks couldn't even go to the same schools are whites. Ruby Bridges is in only now her 60s after desegregating a black elementary school. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Bridges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Bridges) It really seems if this is about equality in schooling, you wouldn't see one complaint without the other.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  Weird that basically every legacy application is by whites yet no one calls it racist. You'd think that people against racism would be all over this if they actually cared about minorities. Funny how this cuts both ways. Or maybe we're just replying to what the article said and not everything that's happened since the beginning of time.
  - BoorishBears 4y ago
    I didn't realize Twilio was modifying SAT scores? It sounds to me like this was more about martyring yourself than anything on topic.
atoav 4y ago
I mean this might have to do with something I would call socioeconomic background more than the color of someone's skin. The french philosopher Pierre Bourdieu discribed multiple forms of "capital" any individual can accumulate in order to get successful: - economic capital (actual money, houses etc) - social capital (the contacts you have to people who can help you out) - symbolic capital (your ability to simulate a certain socioeconomic status in a way so others belive you are also from their class of society — so the way you look, dress, speak, what music you listen to etc) - cultural capital (the actual knowledge you accumulated by learning, reading, practise etc) The more any individual has in each of these categories the easier success is going to be for them. Many of these categories have a huge inherited part as well. Even if your parents are poor academics for example they might teach you how to speak a certain upperclass language, have good contacts and cultural capital for example. Black people in the US have had a (much, much) worse starting point in all of these capital forms and some of those deficits will effectively bar anybody from that socioeconomic background from studying, even if they are a very talented person. Quotas like these are the recognition that existing cultural biases are instutionalized and you have to counterbalance them to a degree, just to make them fair. If you ran a marathon and the guy next to you was not only held back for 30 minutes at the start, but also had to carry a bag of bricks and learn a new language while running (and none of that by his own choice), you'd hardly complain if the guy's run was judged in a different way than yours, or would you? This is essentially what something like this boils down to. People from a poor socioeconomic background cannot lean onto their or their parents contacts (lack of social capital), they cannot lean on their or their parents money (lack of exonomical capital), they cannot lean on their sophisticated way of expression (lack of symbolic capital) — they in fact have to learn that new way of expressing themselves if they want to be taken seriously — and they cannot lean onto their cultural capital as people from rich educated families will naturally have a headstart here as well. Societies with less steep socioeconomic divides tend to be safer, more productive and happier, so it is only rational.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  So, if you say that race-based policies are needed to smooth out differences in socioeconomic background, why not abandon them in favor of criteria based on actual socioeconomic background of the involved person? Thus switching a very loose proxy for the real deal? The current race-based policies consider Obama's daughters "marginalized" and an Ukrainian orphan "privileged". That is sort of awful and illogical.

flatiron 4y ago

Meritocracy has its issues as well. A lot of people got 200 points from private schools and tutoring that may not be available to a lot of the disenfranchised.

telotortium 4y ago
I would agree, but it's not like Harvard will refrain from preferring black candidates from elite private schools, where the staff definitely know how to direct students to tutoring for SAT, over white students from those same schools.
pookha 4y ago
Why should anyone be discriminated against strictly by skin color? That's insane and racist.
- ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
  Equality is out, equity is in.
PubliusMI 4y ago
It's not the private schools and tutoring that impacted the test scores... It's the knowledge and talent caused by those things...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

BoorishBears 4y ago

It's weird that people who complain about these things don't complain about legacy applications when: - they're a practice originally designed to keep up out Jews and Catholics (not in a veiled "politically correct" way, that's what they were openly for: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23055549 https://www.jstor.org/stable/23055549) - the legacies they uphold were established at a time where blacks couldn't even go to the same schools are whites. Ruby Bridges is in only now her 60s after desegregating a black elementary school. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Bridges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Bridges) It really seems if this is about equality in schooling, you wouldn't see one complaint without the other.

thrown_22 4y ago
Weird that basically every legacy application is by whites yet no one calls it racist. You'd think that people against racism would be all over this if they actually cared about minorities. Funny how this cuts both ways. Or maybe we're just replying to what the article said and not everything that's happened since the beginning of time.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  I didn't realize Twilio was modifying SAT scores? It sounds to me like this was more about martyring yourself than anything on topic.

atoav 4y ago

I mean this might have to do with something I would call socioeconomic background more than the color of someone's skin. The french philosopher Pierre Bourdieu discribed multiple forms of "capital" any individual can accumulate in order to get successful: - economic capital (actual money, houses etc) - social capital (the contacts you have to people who can help you out) - symbolic capital (your ability to simulate a certain socioeconomic status in a way so others belive you are also from their class of society — so the way you look, dress, speak, what music you listen to etc) - cultural capital (the actual knowledge you accumulated by learning, reading, practise etc) The more any individual has in each of these categories the easier success is going to be for them. Many of these categories have a huge inherited part as well. Even if your parents are poor academics for example they might teach you how to speak a certain upperclass language, have good contacts and cultural capital for example. Black people in the US have had a (much, much) worse starting point in all of these capital forms and some of those deficits will effectively bar anybody from that socioeconomic background from studying, even if they are a very talented person. Quotas like these are the recognition that existing cultural biases are instutionalized and you have to counterbalance them to a degree, just to make them fair. If you ran a marathon and the guy next to you was not only held back for 30 minutes at the start, but also had to carry a bag of bricks and learn a new language while running (and none of that by his own choice), you'd hardly complain if the guy's run was judged in a different way than yours, or would you? This is essentially what something like this boils down to. People from a poor socioeconomic background cannot lean onto their or their parents contacts (lack of social capital), they cannot lean on their or their parents money (lack of exonomical capital), they cannot lean on their sophisticated way of expression (lack of symbolic capital) — they in fact have to learn that new way of expressing themselves if they want to be taken seriously — and they cannot lean onto their cultural capital as people from rich educated families will naturally have a headstart here as well. Societies with less steep socioeconomic divides tend to be safer, more productive and happier, so it is only rational.

inglor_cz 4y ago
So, if you say that race-based policies are needed to smooth out differences in socioeconomic background, why not abandon them in favor of criteria based on actual socioeconomic background of the involved person? Thus switching a very loose proxy for the real deal? The current race-based policies consider Obama's daughters "marginalized" and an Ukrainian orphan "privileged". That is sort of awful and illogical.