Affirmative Action Sends Blacks To Schools Too Advanced For Them

[mysticjbyrd]

So says Justice Scalia:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/scalia-race-affirmative-action

From my experience, this sounds like total bullshit. I have gone to Community college, average university, and a borderline Ivy League school, and I can tell you that there really isn't a huge difference. There are mickey mouse courses, difficult courses, bad teachers, and good teachers in all of them.

Heck, you can even take FREE courses from MIT if you want! It's the same standard shit!
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

On the other hand, my sister got her BS Nursing at a private religious school and her course load was a fucking joke! I mean utterly fucking laughable! She had a statistics course that was so simple, the final was the equivalent of the first 6 weeks of my AP statistics course back in High school! Ohh and the teacher said they could do it TOGETHER, on the computer, on their own time. In other words, she was telling them to cheat to pass. The rest of her courses primarily involved writing about death.... As far as I am aware she didn't learn a damn thing about nursing. Thank god she went into this program as an RN, otherwise she might kill have killed someone.

Apparently these private schools are basically just selling degrees. You got a pencil, a calculator, and $30,000? Get in there kid, it's physics! GJ, you didn't shit yourself, here's your diploma! Now tell everyone how Jesus created the universe.

 

[Screech]

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/study-scalia-better-off-in-less-advanced-court

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/study-scalia-better-off-in-less-advanced-court

Delicious.

 

[shortylickens]

If my taxes are used to pay professor salaries, I want that school to have a student body that reflects the state population.

umm, if MY taxes are being used, I want the school to teach kids who work their butts off. Kids who will get degrees and join the work force and PAY TAXES! Not kids who are useless or whiny and accustomed to handouts.

 

[mysticjbyrd]

umm, if MY taxes are being used, I want the school to teach kids who work their butts off. Kids who will get degrees and join the work force and PAY TAXES! Not kids who are useless or whiny and accustomed to handouts.

You people make no sense... You cry over some undeserving lower class people getting a few pennies when the govt is handing out trillions to the corporate owners.

 

[shortylickens]

You people make no sense... You cry over some undeserving lower class people getting a few pennies when the govt is handing out trillions to the corporate owners.

I despise corporate bailouts and kickbacks.
I abhor billion dollar DoD contracts for shit vehicles and weapons.

If we could deal with those two things then America would have the finest schools in the world.

 

[Rebel_L]

Affirmative action is merely a short cut to fixing generations of discrimination. It's extremely difficult to bring blacks up to white standards because (on average) they lack the same educational and financial background. By allocating some educational opportunities and even jobs to blacks who don't objectively deserve them, we ensure that their kids and grandkids start out on a level playing field. Thus we do in one or two generations what might otherwise take a century or two. (Obviously this still takes decades because only a small number of blacks can benefit from affirmative action each generation.) Sure, it's not fair to those discriminated against (who are mostly Asian, not Caucasian) but life isn't fair. It's also not fair that some kids are born to parents who are poor and uneducated because that was official government policy. Having been denied the right to even apply for a job due to my skin color, I can tell you absolutely that is the side of the equation I want to be on even with that minor setback.

Neither of my parents made it past high school, yet my father retired owning his auto parts store outright and my mother retired as the county financial director. My paternal grandfather started the auto parts store and spent most of his life paying off the rich man who bankrolled him. My maternal grandfather had to drop out and go to work at twelve (oldest of twelve kids when his father died) and he died with a farm valued at near a million dollars. All that was the result of very hard work and long hours, but you know what else they all had in common? None of them were prohibited from attending the "normal" schools, nor prohibited by government from having any jobs they could land, nor seriously discriminated against by society due to their skin color.

With all the inequities inherent in life, affirmative action is one of the most benign. I don't think it's fair to call it racism, it's just racially based discrimination to overturn the effects of government sanctioned racism.

The answer to racial discrimination cant be more racial discrimination.

I do not know many of the details of the various affirmative action programs, and my main point may very well not apply to them all, but certainly it applies to the common held beliefs that the name brings to mind.

The problem is not that on average black people are poorer than white people, but the problem really is two things. First, that as a society we badly abused the black people as a racial group and exploited them. Secondly that poor people have a hard time succeeding in general because they start so much farther behind than the people they are competing with.

The first problem I think has been in a general sense addressed in a moving forward fashion. We generally speaking as society have reached the point (at least in my experience of life anyways) that we no longer consider any racial group superior or inferior based on their skin color. We still have plenty of cultural stereotypes which play a similar role, but I can not say that I have ever heard anyone who is not really old suggest that regional genetics make some one less of a person than someone else. I believe we have moved to a point where at large people don't think poor black people are poor because they are black, but because they either made poor life choices and ended up poor, or came from a poor background where not that exceptional individual that pulls out of those circumstances, ie they are just normal.

The second problem is the tricky one. The government system had a big hand in making sure that blacks were overrepresented in the poor category, that was wrong and I want to do something about it. If you now single out poor black to help them get ahead what does that say to other poor people? It simply re-emphasizes the racial viewpoint. If we work really hard to make sure that all poor people have the tools to be productive members of society with the chance to succeed then we will achieve the same end goal, yet have taken the racial view out. The targeted approach redresses what see I as a big imbalance with less resources committed yet fails to encompass the human experience. No one lives as a statistic on a page, a poor white person has a hard life, so does a poor Asian person or Hispanic or Black. All the advantages that the statistics show anyone had do not matter to anyone that failed to get into the school they wanted or didn't reach the goal they had in mind. If we help some though because they are black it reinforces the idea that color matters to all the rest who don't get help. At some point we need to stop with that. If it means that we pour more resources to help everyone rather than a targeted group so we can still get it done in a reasonable time frame then to me that's the answer and I'm ok with the extra taxes that would result from such a plan.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

I do not know many of the details of the various affirmative action programs, and my main point may very well not apply to them all, but certainly it applies to the common held beliefs that the name brings to mind.

Well that's really the rub isn't it? Affirmative action exists as discrimination and anecdotes when people see it not working or working badly, but no one really notices it when it works properly because the result is the would-be norm unskewed by institutional racism.

 

[OverVolt]

It's not like there's the greatest correlation between difficulty to enter a university and difficulty to pass. Ivys have some of the biggest cases of grade inflation, and for many degrees at many state universities it's doubtful that the degree content changes much. Of course, anyone getting into an Ivy League is going to be smart even if affirmative action got them there. The issue isn't so much the kind of university as much as it is sub-par minority students that struggle through remedial classes and only make it into college at all via affirmative action. Those students would be better off starting in community colleges or a trade school; it's a total waste to be accepted into a program, incur tens of thousands of dollars in debt, only to be expelled after two years for not keeping up.

What the hell do you think the SAT & GPA predicts?

 

[Moonbeam]

There have been lesser "qualified" POTUS in the past, including a few that had little if any formal education.

A donkey laden with books remains a donkey. An education may create knowledge and information, which are good things, but it is the development of wisdom and character that makes great men. You know this, of course, Just saying.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

What the hell do you think the SAT & GPA predicts?

College performance, to some extent. Not sure what your point is. That the SAT keeps students out of difficult colleges they'd fail out of otherwise? In certain programs at certain schools I'm sure that's true, but a Bachelor's in X at one place or another really isn't going to be too different as long as both are accredited. See the post a little bit earlier about MIT's online courses. The biggest difference will be in funding and quality of certain services (especially labs and similar), but the same textbooks and material are going to be taught most places. I forget which college it is, but I know there's one Ivy-tier place with a Wiki detailing various concepts and applications of molecular biology and biochem (my field). It's all the same stuff I learned in undergrad, the difference is that I had to join a research lab, while those kids reap the benefit of massive government endowments, so they learn it in some MCB 4xx lab. They weren't learning anything more difficult than I got to at my low-tier public college.

So if your argument is that SAT/ACT score should be the sole determinant of worthiness to attend college, I'd have to disagree. It's a convenient measure that shows dedication to study for a specific and arbitrary testing format (after all, the material itself is basic high school math and slightly more advanced vocabulary), which in turn would indicate dedication to sticking with a degree program. It's necessary for colleges lest they be burdened with thousands of individual application letters and interviews, but I can definitely see why many might loosen up when it comes to certain under-represented or disadvantaged groups. E.g., I'm white and from a well-to-do family, but I was also homeschooled and had basically not taken a single exam the entire period from 6th through 12th grade. I did well enough on the SAT (failing by Anandtech standards though), but obviously not as well as students that may have the privilege of frequent SAT prep in high school. Minority kids from dirt poor high schools that barely even have textbooks available are obviously a thousand times worse off than I was.

 

[silicon]

So says Justice Scalia:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/scalia-race-affirmative-action

Todays affirmative action students are tomorrows college dropouts. I am very sure many white students did not qualify for entrance so why should a blacks who don't qualify get to enter? What a waste of time and money to admit them. What is wrong with having enough brains and ambition be the criteria to qualify?? this PC BS is way past its prime.

 

[werepossum]

umm, if MY taxes are being used, I want the school to teach kids who work their butts off. Kids who will get degrees and join the work force and PAY TAXES! Not kids who are useless or whiny and accustomed to handouts.

Well said.

The answer to racial discrimination cant be more racial discrimination.

I do not know many of the details of the various affirmative action programs, and my main point may very well not apply to them all, but certainly it applies to the common held beliefs that the name brings to mind.

The problem is not that on average black people are poorer than white people, but the problem really is two things. First, that as a society we badly abused the black people as a racial group and exploited them. Secondly that poor people have a hard time succeeding in general because they start so much farther behind than the people they are competing with.

The first problem I think has been in a general sense addressed in a moving forward fashion. We generally speaking as society have reached the point (at least in my experience of life anyways) that we no longer consider any racial group superior or inferior based on their skin color. We still have plenty of cultural stereotypes which play a similar role, but I can not say that I have ever heard anyone who is not really old suggest that regional genetics make some one less of a person than someone else. I believe we have moved to a point where at large people don't think poor black people are poor because they are black, but because they either made poor life choices and ended up poor, or came from a poor background where not that exceptional individual that pulls out of those circumstances, ie they are just normal.

The second problem is the tricky one. The government system had a big hand in making sure that blacks were overrepresented in the poor category, that was wrong and I want to do something about it. If you now single out poor black to help them get ahead what does that say to other poor people? It simply re-emphasizes the racial viewpoint. If we work really hard to make sure that all poor people have the tools to be productive members of society with the chance to succeed then we will achieve the same end goal, yet have taken the racial view out. The targeted approach redresses what see I as a big imbalance with less resources committed yet fails to encompass the human experience. No one lives as a statistic on a page, a poor white person has a hard life, so does a poor Asian person or Hispanic or Black. All the advantages that the statistics show anyone had do not matter to anyone that failed to get into the school they wanted or didn't reach the goal they had in mind. If we help some though because they are black it reinforces the idea that color matters to all the rest who don't get help. At some point we need to stop with that. If it means that we pour more resources to help everyone rather than a targeted group so we can still get it done in a reasonable time frame then to me that's the answer and I'm ok with the extra taxes that would result from such a plan.

Certainly we can fix this without using racial discrimination. The question then becomes is it moral to take a couple hundred years to fix what took a couple hundred years to happen? I'm not saying it absolutely is - lots of immigrants (including Africans without benefit of any real education) come to this country and succeed, so obviously anybody can do it. But I would also argue that it is not immoral to use racial discrimination to more quickly fix what racial discrimination broke. It's a judgement call, but I think part of affirmative action's utility is showing poor blacks that things are different for people like you. If you're raised in the ghetto by a druggie mother or even a hard-working but uneducated grandmother, you may have a very difficult time believing that things really are different and thus that you wouldn't be wasting your time and energy trying to "act white". On the other hand, if you see people you know (people with whom you identify) succeeding, it becomes much easier to believe.

College performance, to some extent. Not sure what your point is. That the SAT keeps students out of difficult colleges they'd fail out of otherwise? In certain programs at certain schools I'm sure that's true, but a Bachelor's in X at one place or another really isn't going to be too different as long as both are accredited. See the post a little bit earlier about MIT's online courses. The biggest difference will be in funding and quality of certain services (especially labs and similar), but the same textbooks and material are going to be taught most places. I forget which college it is, but I know there's one Ivy-tier place with a Wiki detailing various concepts and applications of molecular biology and biochem (my field). It's all the same stuff I learned in undergrad, the difference is that I had to join a research lab, while those kids reap the benefit of massive government endowments, so they learn it in some MCB 4xx lab. They weren't learning anything more difficult than I got to at my low-tier public college.

So if your argument is that SAT/ACT score should be the sole determinant of worthiness to attend college, I'd have to disagree. It's a convenient measure that shows dedication to study for a specific and arbitrary testing format (after all, the material itself is basic high school math and slightly more advanced vocabulary), which in turn would indicate dedication to sticking with a degree program. It's necessary for colleges lest they be burdened with thousands of individual application letters and interviews, but I can definitely see why many might loosen up when it comes to certain under-represented or disadvantaged groups. E.g., I'm white and from a well-to-do family, but I was also homeschooled and had basically not taken a single exam the entire period from 6th through 12th grade. I did well enough on the SAT (failing by Anandtech standards though), but obviously not as well as students that may have the privilege of frequent SAT prep in high school. Minority kids from dirt poor high schools that barely even have textbooks available are obviously a thousand times worse off than I was.

One of my professors was an MIT grad. I've had the opportunity to go through some of his books and tests, and they sometimes were a lot different from what we learned in my accredited state university in the depth which you were expected to know the material.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

They released the audio and actually hearing it I'd swear it was from a case on the heals of racial integration.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/scalia-some-black-students-dont-belong-at-elite-colleges/vi-AAgiCSu

 

[SheHateMe]

Perhaps that white girl suing the University of Texas would have benefit from going to a "slower" school since she wasn't eligible for admission anyway to UofT anyway.

 

[Joepublic2]

Perhaps that white girl suing the University of Texas would have benefit from going to a "slower" school since she wasn't eligible for admission anyway to UofT anyway.

If she got kicked out of her slot due to AA then yeah; she was probably marginally qualified to begin with. You can understand why she'd be upset, though. AA these days seems to be benefiting men over women which is pretty lulzy.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

She wasn't in the top 10% of her class, UoT only admits from the top 10%, but this girl at whatever % she was surely better suited than those "other" top 10%ers from those "other" schools. Is that being kicked out of her slot because of AA?

 

[Joepublic2]

She wasn't in the top 10% of her class, UoT only admits from the top 10%, but this girl at whatever % she was surely better suited than those "other" top 10%ers from those "other" schools. Is that being kicked out of her slot because of AA?

I'm unfamiliar with their enrollment process. They only draw from the top 10%? If that's the case then yeah, cry more.

 

[IronWing]

LOL, University of Texas is an advanced school?

If we were talking Texas A&M, you'd have a point.

 

[SheHateMe]

If she got kicked out of her slot due to AA then yeah; she was probably marginally qualified to begin with. You can understand why she'd be upset, though. AA these days seems to be benefiting men over women which is pretty lulzy.

Most of the spots for students in the special "AA" program she tried to get in through went to white students....


She's literally grasping for straws.


To put that into perspective...this girl applied to UofT twice. She was denied through regular admissions, they told her to try a special summer program...she applied there too and still didn't get in. So, because a few black kids got in and she didn't, she's saying she was discriminated against.

One black applicant and 4 latinos were admitted through the summer program. 42 white applicants were admitted as well. Lastly, 168 minority students with grades as good or better than hers were also denied.....but I guess they can't sue!

 

[Joepublic2]

Most of the spots for students in the special "AA" program she tried to get in through went to white students....


She's literally grasping for straws.


To put that into perspective...this girl applied to UofT twice. She was denied through regular admissions, they told her to try a special summer program...she applied there too and still didn't get in. So, because a few black kids got in and she didn't, she's saying she was discriminated against.

One black applicant and 4 latinos were admitted through the summer program. 42 white applicants were admitted as well. Lastly, 168 minority students with grades as good as or better than hers were also denied.....but I guess they can't sue!

Yeah, it sounds like she couldn't hack it. I don't know why she'd take her case to the supreme court given how weak it sounds. A waste of time and money.

 

[Brainonska511]

Yeah, it sounds like she couldn't hack it. I don't know why she'd take her case to the supreme court given how weak it sounds. A waste of time and money.

Like the last ACA case, someone with an agenda found a rube of a plaintiff to push their own ideology.

 

[Victorian Gray]

Like the last ACA case, someone with an agenda found a rube of a plaintiff to push their own ideology.

Here ya go. The guy behind the lawsuit:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-casemaker-idUSBRE8B30V220121204#gvFOkSXpeot1KHH6.97

 

[maluckey]

Well said.


Certainly we can fix this without using racial discrimination. The question then becomes is it moral to take a couple hundred years to fix what took a couple hundred years to happen? I'm not saying it absolutely is - lots of immigrants (including Africans without benefit of any real education) come to this country and succeed, so obviously anybody can do it. But I would also argue that it is not immoral to use racial discrimination to more quickly fix what racial discrimination broke. It's a judgement call, but I think part of affirmative action's utility is showing poor blacks that things are different for people like you. If you're raised in the ghetto by a druggie mother or even a hard-working but uneducated grandmother, you may have a very difficult time believing that things really are different and thus that you wouldn't be wasting your time and energy trying to "act white". On the other hand, if you see people you know (people with whom you identify) succeeding, it becomes much easier to believe.


One of my professors was an MIT grad. I've had the opportunity to go through some of his books and tests, and they sometimes were a lot different from what we learned in my accredited state university in the depth which you were expected to know the material.

Well put.

I've had more than a few beers, so bear with me.......

discrimination is historically real, and not only for blacks. Look at how Chinese immigrants ere treated in the 1800-1900's. Hell! look how French Canadians (Franco Americans) were treated in the turn of the last century and you'll see that it's real. What's also real is how a certain ethnic group reacts. Chinese made damned sure that their kids are smarter than their peers. French silently assimilated and only the surnames and clan names remain to differentiate them (sadly....except the Cajuns). Japanese Americans rebounded after internment camps by becoming super educated and typically, becoming active in the community.

For whatever reason (s) black African Americans did not assimilate. There are papers out there on tribalism, psychology and racial bias etc galore, but the facts are that black African immigrants to this country do not fall into the same category as American blacks. That leads me to believe that they are a unique group, not bound by ethnicity or race, but by a social construct. Having that unique construct and subculture leaves them vulnerable as "outsiders". The only difference should be the skin color, but then, the African-immigrant communities and Indian communities, do just fine in comparison.

Before I get too far out there....there is ONE huge discrepancy amonst the groups.....adult male role-models and mentors are almost absent in black communities.

Not sure how to fix that, and I'm out of beer in the house, so I guess that for now, I'll spare everyone the rest of my scattered thoughts.

M

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

You people make no sense... You cry over some undeserving lower class people getting a few pennies when the govt is handing out trillions to the corporate owners.

You know what the difference is? Most corporations BRING something to the table.

They bring a workforce of employing 20k+ people, all of which must pay their social security tax, medicaid tax, and income taxes. The corporation itself pays taxes as well, and is responsible for multiple other taxes (Sales/Use taxes, property taxes, etc...).

Handouts have statistically not helped the pathetic saps of society learn to contribute instead of take. They just want more take.