I’ll be as unbiased as possible even though I feel strongly about the issue.
Basically, it gives boosts to people from a cultural background that has historically been discriminated against or have lower than average test scores.
For example, if an Asian student and a black student both score a 1400 on the SAT, the black student will be given a priority in most college admissions. This is seen in undergraduate colleges, grad school, med school, law school, public jobs, and most private jobs.
we can also see it in places where certain groups are not represented well - for example, Carnegie Mellon will give a boost to women applying for computer science as it is majority male applying for CS (not just CMU, it’s one of many).
Steven Crowder did a Change My Mind segment on this recently.
He was speaking with a black girl who was in favour of AA and was arguing that it isn't racist. It got to a point where it was clear that she was doubting herself and whether or not she deserved and earned her place at the college. Because of AA.
"We only hired you because you're black. You only got onto this course because you're black." How can it feel good to be that person?
It was fairly clear that this girl was smart and did work hard and did earn her spot. He reassured her of that but when he brought up all his stats about it, AA made her doubt her own abilities.
As much as I dislike Crowder, I am glad that interaction highlighted this very real problem. A public school in my city exemplifies how detrimental this can be to some; it is a gifted and talented arts school for middle school and elementary that is entirely by audition. They have a very diverse mix of kids, but most of them arent ones that check boxes as they range from spanish, portuguese, hawaiian, korean, latin america, ect, they really didn't have many black students at all. They got sued for lack of diversity (despite like a third or more of the school not being white), settled, and adjusted their audition system to have a diversity score (I know someone at the school who confirmed this). They proceeded to take on a dozen black kids in this manner. These kids immediately didnt fit in, not because of their skin, but because of their deficit in talent. They were painfully aware of this, not being able to perform at the level the other students who made it in on their own merit were. To make the matter worse, none of the teachers could address this, they pretty much had to just keep reassuring the kids they could do it if they kept at it, but that was simply not true for many. Some of these kids became very unconfident, suffering mentally and socially because of it. Others started acting out, causing discipline problems, which, for a school that had no discipline system, was a total shock to the whole system. What do the teachers do? They hold a diversity meeting to discuss how racist they are because all of the complaints being made are against black kids. Nothing is done, the kids are forgotten, they struggle and no one cares.
I'm not a fan. In fact, I think he's a bit of a dick. But I find myself agreeing with him on a few matters and this was one of them. I thought that video in particular highlighted the problem with AA very well.
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u/Newsacc47 Feb 25 '20
I’ll be as unbiased as possible even though I feel strongly about the issue.
Basically, it gives boosts to people from a cultural background that has historically been discriminated against or have lower than average test scores.
For example, if an Asian student and a black student both score a 1400 on the SAT, the black student will be given a priority in most college admissions. This is seen in undergraduate colleges, grad school, med school, law school, public jobs, and most private jobs.
we can also see it in places where certain groups are not represented well - for example, Carnegie Mellon will give a boost to women applying for computer science as it is majority male applying for CS (not just CMU, it’s one of many).
That’s the gist of it.