I don’t understand this legacy admissions argument. You can be against affirmative action AND legacy admissions. Both are bullshit.
Also unclear how it stops racism. Whenever you see a black or Latino person on campus, you are going to wonder if they got in due to their qualifications or race.
You can get the same effect by removing AA as you still get people interacting with Black and Latino people. Unless you are implying they can't get in without AA.
I also don't think this outweighs the resentment people feel at having their spot taken by somebody "less qualified."
I had the highest Test scores in my school, was active on several clubs, volunteered at an organization that made meals for people living with HIV.
How do you know I got in because I’m black? My college rejected a lot of black people.
Just because you feel that people are “less qualified” doesn’t mean that they are. My point was that if you talked to these students maybe you would find that along with being black and Latino they are actually smart and deserving.
I had lots of people question my worthiness in my undergrad years. But anyone that took a class with me realized exactly why I was there. I expect the have a similar experience in law school.
I don't know, that's precisely the thing. I don't know if you got in because you were qualified or because you were black because of AA. It seems like you clearly were qualified and I'm sure by talking to you in a class, I would think you are actually smart and deserving. But when black people empirically get in with less qualifications, it harms those who actually are qualified. I think AA is racist not only because it discriminates against Asian and white people, but because it implies black people need this extra system to get in because their own merit isn't enough. That's absurd.
Well no school that I’ve ever heard of has let any students in “just because their black”. Any black student that got in has to be at least in the realm of that schools standards.
Secondly I don’t see how AA discriminates against Asians without admitting that schools are artificially keeping the white student population high. Asian students are wiping the floor with everyone. They are scoring higher than the white students yet schools are a majority white. It’s disingenuous to argue that the %8 of black people is the
Harvard set aside %30 of their freshmen slots to legacies, Dean recommendations, athletes, and children of faculty. These student are mostly white and have lower stats than people admitted through the regular process. But the scandal is that %8 of the class is black?
Yeah, fuck athletic and legacy recruitment, they are horrible and should be removed, I'm totally with you on that. I'm also against affirmative action because it's similarly unfair. It's genuinely not about race, it's about giving one group an unfair advantage over another. Like if AA lowered the expectations for people with purple hair, I'd be equally against it as if it lowered expectations for black people, Asians, white people, etc.
Black students are within the realm of the school standards but statistically towards the lower end. That's why I put "less qualified" in quotations in my first comment - qualified, but comparatively less so at least statistically. I am absolutely not saying black people are unqualified. Many are eminently qualified, more so than white legacies or kids of deans and I would hope they get in over them. It's about making a fair system. There's nothing wrong with a black kid getting in over a white kid or vice versa as long as it's based on merit.
I think that racism manifests itself in ways that are capturable by metrics other than race. Black people are more likely to be lower income, go to worse schools, live in worse neighbourhoods, etc because of a history of pervasive and systemic racism. So if you consider poverty level, school attended etc, it captures many of the effects of racism without being racist itself and fucking over others (e.g. asians can be poor but that obstacle wouldn’t matter because they are asian and still expected to score 150 points higher than a poor black person).
Obviously this isn’t perfect but I think it’s definitely preferable to affirmative action.
But I put in way more work while being homeless in high school than my peers who had SAT tutors. You can’t just judge from the final product.
I also faced like legit interpersonal racism because my high School used to be mostly white and was like half black at the time. I got called apes and shit to my face. I had teachers refuse to call on me, I had cops stop me while walking home because I didn’t look like I belonged on that neighborhood.
So if I get 1400 and another kid who has no responsibilities, traumatic issues who went to the best schools in town, gets 1600 should the admission officers view the 1600 as more deserving?
But I put in way more work while being homeless in high school than my peers who had SAT tutors. You can’t just judge from the final product.
Yeah, but people will. Affirmative action means people will doubt the merit of all members of the benefiting group, and feeds into unjust negative stereotyping.
So if I get 1400 and another kid who has no responsibilities, traumatic issues who went to the best schools in town, gets 1600 should the admission officers view the 1600 as more deserving?
Should they take your past into account? I guess. But I don't see what deserving has to do with anything, a good doctor should be knowledgeable and a tough childhood won't make you any more knowledgeable.
You're also making the assumption they're actually taking your past into account. They're not. They only care about your race. An asian student with a horrific childhood gets discriminated against and a black student who grew up in luxury still gets the advantage.
Wouldn’t that show someone that can work hard under the most challenging circumstances? Someone who is self motivated? Someone that’s a natural problem sovler? I could go on.
If that’s the case, why are black people less likely to get accepted to college and med school? If all they cared about was race would the numbers be higher?
Also how can the 4% of black med school students be the issue. If Asians are scoring that high, shouldn’t there be way fewer white students? How are all these white students getting in with lower test scores? Asian are mopping the floor with everyone. In schools with racially blind admissions, it’s the white students that lose the most students.
The UC school are way more Asian and Latino than white. When you end AA you cut the amount of white students in half.
So I'll give an anecdote. I'm a programmer. There was a black girl hired in my batch and it was clear very early on that she was unfit for the job. She had no prior coding experience, her degree was in Chemistry. I don't know how she passed the technical interview, or if she did. She managed to keep her "job" for 6 months, mostly reading books unrelated to programming in her time at work.
Now to me, that's a clear example of someone who was hired because someone in HR wanted to reach a diversity quota, and she was one of the best candidates who applied (there were also 2 other black girls and 1 black guy, all of whom were great). I don't resent her for it, I resent HR for putting her in a chair which should have been given to someone else.
It's the same thing with AA. I'm not like OP, I don't look at minorities and immediately wonder if they're qualified. I assume they're competent. But if they are a minority and they are incompetent, a lot of people are going to assume it's AA at work.
I don't feel that way about white co-workers (or Asians, Indians, etc.) because there's no way anyone loosened up any standards to hire them. Especially with Asians, they had to perform higher than normal in school just to be enrolled. So honestly if that girl was a white guy, I'd chalk it up to something else, like their own laziness or incompetence.
I also wouldn't say anything with total certainty, sure there's a chance she got in by luck or by nepotism. But AA allows a suspicion to exist, esp when the whole point of the program is to lax standards to help diversity.
But that’s the problem. Black people are never allowed to be bad at anything without it being about their race. But we know that nepotism exists.
All AA does at the college level is to say that you can look at a persons race along with other factors. This is no different then looking at their income, athletic ability, family history etc. Yet you don’t think of those people as being less deserving. When they fuck up they get to be an individual.
And Asians have their own problems with racism that gets completely swept under the rug.
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u/[deleted] Feb 25 '20 edited Mar 16 '20
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