Indeed, it is not the end of the world if a white student ends up going to Virginia Tech instead of U.Va., but the issue is the impact of racially discriminatory admissions policies on white and Asian applicants. D.C. Taylor makes a facile and misleading analogy between the black student who is not preferentially admitted (and ends up at a lesser school) and the white or Asian student whose chances of admission to an elite college are reduced as a consequence of preferences for non-Asian minorities.

Abigail Thernstrom, at 11:37 am EDT on June 7, 2005

Missing the Point

If the Center for Equal Opportunity is truly concerned about opportunity, they should also be discussing the real source of the issue: inequal opportunities that exist well before college.

Until all students, regardless of where they live, their income, or their racial/ethnic background, have an equal chance in K-12 to receive an excellent education, affirmative action will be something that colleges have to pay attention to.

Bailey, at 11:54 am EDT on June 7, 2005

Ogbu, Anderson, Wilson, Wamba, Thernstrom

Chuck:—or anybody—: Could you tell us more about the work of these persons, please? And you say “starting with—” so could you please expand this ? Thank you.

Victor Haley, at 5:27 pm EDT on June 7, 2005

Sources & Statistics

The authors of those various books with their respective titles can be easily located via a Google search or at Amazon.com

It will be apparent from the titles how they relate the vexing issues of showing how sub-cultures in the U.S. can advance or retard the educational aspirations of its members.

The proponents of racial or ethnic double standards (or lowered standards) for university admissions often seem obsessed with admissions numbers. They rarely discuss or speak candidly about disparities in graduation rates or in the comparative figures for “time-to-degree.”

The abolition of racial and ethnic preferences at the campuses of the University of California took effect with the entering class of 1998. As students since then have had their demonstrated academic achievements more closely matched to the various campuses of U.C., the graduation rates and time-to-degree years for whites and blacks has narrowed.

These are not the issues that the racial and ethnic preference lobbyists care to discuss, explain, or analyze.

Chuck, at 4:34 am EDT on June 8, 2005

Racism

The root problem with Affirmative Action is it treats individual human beings with their own unique talents and goals as members of groups. People are no longer students; they’re Black students or White students or Asian students or Hispanic students or Female or Gay or Christian or Muslim or whatever. That a person would want to be viewed as student without being put in a catagory never seems relevant. Advocates of Racial Preferencing are so used to thinking of people as units of groups that if the number of units in Group A is greater than the number of units in Group B, then it is fair and proper that some of the units of Group A must give up their just dues to members of Group B so that the numbers at the bottom of the page even out. That the individual units in question are human beings who are responsible for themselves and not their fellow units is beyond the understanding of collectivist thinkers. Each student is a minority of one. Respect them.

Gus, Affirmative Action, at 9:59 am EDT on June 14, 2005

Admission is Only the Beginning...

I went to a top-ranked liberal-arts college despite coming from a disadvantaged background: low SES, first-generation immigrant, gay, Latino. I did not do as well as I might have, had I accessed greater support within the Latino/a community at my colllege, which is essential (as the authors of the study suggest) in retaining minority students and in boosting their morale and sense of inclusion in the franchise of higher ed. In addition, the school might have had better support systems in place to recognize this; a mentoring program and stronger advising would have helped combat the alienation of being “different” in a school of gifted but homogeneous rich white students with smatterings of students of color and those of lower SES.

Affirmative action is only the beginning. I am sure I would have gone to a less prestigious school had there been no affirmative action; I may have done really well in a city or state college, but then missed out on a prestige that historically has been reserved for children of privilege.

If all of you who misprize affirmative action want all-white and Asian prestige institutions, with a smattering of genius Latinos and African Americans, while lower-tier colleges are predominantly comprised of people of color—then so be it.

Just don’t be surprised if your call to diminish or extinguish affirmative action returns us to a world of de facto segregation, separate and certainly unequal.

O.G., Affirming Action, at 7:37 am EDT on August 3, 2005

affirmative action

Helow people all this discussion over affirmative action policies on university places — have peple forgotton the Alumni students who due to the legacy laws are able to go to some of the top universities even when the are not qualified to or have the scores! Time has not been taken abck there are generations of african Americans and indians who have had been denied — due to descrmination and unpaid contribution to the country in hundreeds years of slavery. The United states has historic debts — and until equality of opportunity is established affirmative action has to stay. dont forget White americans have had 500 hundreed years of affirmative action that preferred us over non whites. Its only been 35 years of tryign to re-address this balance, which barely affects the White population anyway and we have having complaints after complaints — this is fair and just so live with it.

sultana, London, affirmative action, at 11:53 am EST on December 31, 2005

So people, once again, ignore us

Fact of the matter is, affirmative action has its benefits and its disadvantages. However, like one commenter already noted, each student is indeed a minority of one and ought to be considered on an individual basis. Even so, when considering black and hispanic students, or any other student from what could be considered a disadvantaged background, colleges ought to take the background into consideration. That is what affirmative action is trying to do, but it fails miserably at it. The fact that it only applies to black and hispanic students and actually works against Asian students reveal the system’s implied biases (i.e. that black and hispanic students are simply less capable than Asian students, which is certainly not true).

If affirmative action actually assessed students based on where they came from in terms of region/locale, then we might be getting somewhere, because there is significant data out there that draw strong links between socioeconomic status and academic achievement as youth. It doesn’t matter if you’re Asian, white, black, or hispanic — if you grew up in a tough neighborhood, chances are your scores, GPA, and apparent academic potential are going to be negatively affected by where you lived. While it does just so happen that black and hispanic neighborhoods in the large cities tend to have high concentrations and large numbers of underachieving students, it does not follow that black and hispanic students are less academically capable regardless of where they grew up (which is what affirmative action fails to understand).

Now, because we shouldn’t screw over people whose cultural (and by that I mean how they grew up, not ethnic distinctions — how one grew up could include emphasis or lack thereof on academic achievement and other merits in and out of school) backgrounds are clearly related to their apparent academic potential, something like affirmative action does need to stay in place. However, it should not assess students based on race (because a hispanic student in a well-off suburb can do just as well as a white student, for instance, yet has an unfair advantage in admissions simply because he/she is hispanic — or a black student in a well-off suburb can do just as well as an Asian student, yet will have an unfair advantage due to affirmative action’s reverse racism), but rather on socioeconomic status indicators (one of these indicators is where one lives).

But of course, as we all know, these sorts of adjustments take a lot of work, and we also know that where there’s real, serious, critically important work, there’s no government interest. Or at least if the government is interested, it will take its sweet-ass time getting anything done.

The funny thing is, white numbers aren’t ever really affected, but Asians, who are generally a productive and accomplished minority with a lot to give to American society, are affected. It’s as if the Asians are the “white shield” — if there’s an issue in the land of race and race relations, if someone has to take a hit (these days, it’s always in favor of blacks and hispanics), the whites put Asians between themselves and the other minorities. It just seems to work out that way — when inner-city blacks riot (interestingly, I don’t know of much hispanic rioting), they go after the Asian businesses and agencies, not the white ones. When affirmative action has to screw someone over to benefit blacks and hispanics, Asians are screwed over, not the whites. This sort of thing is why affirmative action is not much better than anti-Asian racism couched in politically correct terms. There is nothing wrong with trying to give parts of your population a hand up, because not every place is perfect for growing up — but there is something wrong if you have to disadvantage another part of your population to do it.

Charles, Northwestern University, at 6:45 pm EDT on April 6, 2007