Affirmative Action

[confuted]

[JBL]

Well, I guess there aren't any moderators on this forum, so would one of the administrators please delete confuted's message on this post (and this one, as well), since
a) I am mildly offended by it
b) It is irrelevant to the question posed by Hikari
c) It is irrelevant to a discussion of this sort in general since every major university in the country, with a small handful of exceptions, uses Affirmative Action.

[confuted]

JBL, I certainly didn't mean to offend you, but I LIVE in Michigan. A bunch of my friends have gone and visited the campus and stuff at U of M. A few days ago, one of them (a white male) was telling me that down there, there were so many minority students that whites were a minority themselves on campus. I don't have anything against minorities, but you know that those kids weren't all admitted because of talent/grades/such - a lot of them got in based on skin color/whatever. That's not right.

If you look at how their admissions system was structured before the court ruling, a minority student got 20 points on the basis of their skin, and a perfect essay got somebody something like 2 points. I believe you needed a total of 80 for admission. Sorry, but some people prefer to go to a college where every admitted student is there because of something they've done, not because of the way they were born. Hopefully you understand why I made the comment.

[Ravi B]

According to the University of Michigan web site, here is the racial/ethnic breakdown of freshman who entered the Ann Arbor campus in 2003:

Caucasian 64.9%
Asian American 13.7%
Other/unknown 8.2%
African American 7.7%
Hispanic American 4.8%
Native American 0.7%

Because this is a math site, I'll leave out my thoughts on Affirmative Action.

[gauss202]

Futhermore the state of Michigan itself is 14.2% African-American.

[confuted]

[gauss202]

That should tell you something about the quality of the schools and the access to educational resources in those city schools. No matter where they live, they are still citizens of Michigan.

[rrusczyk]

This was originally part of a thread about good colleges for math. I moved it here as it's not really part of that discussion, but is appropriate for discussion in this forum.

[confuted]

[gauss202]

I'm not from Detroit, or even Michigan for that matter, so I can't confirm or deny whether that is true (though it would be very unusual for inner city schools if it were).

But the real point here is much deeper than just money in and of itself. Affirmative Action is a deep and complex issue that can be approached from a lot of different angles - both from the perspective of pro and con.

But arguing against racial Affirmative Action for moral reasons leads to a very slippery slope, and it is tenuous at best. For one thing, most such arguments never address other types of "affirmative action" policies such as athletics, legacies, geographical diversity considerations - which in most cases account for an even greater percentage of admissions than racial affirmative action policies. And secondly, they rarely, if ever, face the essential question of what is the purpose of a public (and even private) University is supposed to be, and who is it supposed to serve.

Most disturbing of all though, is when these arguments try to recharacterize Civil Rights equal protection laws to fit their agenda (in many cases by people who didn't support Civil Rights laws in the first place). It's analogous to a basketball game where one team has been cheating for three and a half quarters. Then when they're finally called on it, they say, "Yeah, you're right. Lets all just play fair now." But the score is already 100 to 50 and the other team is demoralized. And when the losing team asks to reset the score, they're accused of cheating.

Will affirmative action fix everything that's wrong with this country? Absolutely not. But does it make a difference? Absolutely. Because lets face it - people who are not from inner-city Detroit, or Flint, or Lansing are not going to go there and integrate themselves into families or communities, or act as leaders or mentors there. Having at least some degree of plurality among your educated population is essential to a healthy functioning democracy.

[JBL]

[Tare]

My two cents on this topic: If people really believed all people were equal they wouldn't have "special" programs just because of race or ethnicity and some people are just using this as an opportunity to make things look good (as a campaign sort of) which can cause reverse-discrimination (which is sometimes just as bad as discrimination, well they're basically same thing except the positions are opposite and such)

Also believe it or not people tend to (not meaning you guys ) look at English deficient people as "stupid" people so people also set up special program which lets people who can't speak English well into schools and other places and that's clearly different from the first case so yeah, just pointing that out.

[confuted]

JBL - OF COURSE there are fewer minority students that meet the admissions standards. That's because they make up a smaller percentage of the population! Gasp.

I agree with Tare in that if people are equal, they don't need special programs. If somebody wants to get into a certain college, they should earn their way in by merit of their accomplishments. Life much more closely resembles an oligarchy than a democracy. If you let kids into a school that don't have the educational background necessary to be there, and then expect them to succeed in said school, you'll be presented with two options.
[tab]1) Lower the educational standards of the school so that the kids without the background can handle the curriculum
[tab]2) Provide these students with some form of a way to "coast by," much like they likely did in high school if they don't have the test scores and such. That statement isn't bigotry - it's fact.

The consequences of action 1 are obvious. You'll produce classes full of young adults that don't have the skills to cut it in real life. They won't assume CEO positions and such - they'll be stuck in more mundane jobs, and there will be fewer (no?) qualified (by the original standards) applicants for high ranking jobs.

The consequences of action 2 are a bit different. Instead of the entire class being uneducated, the students admitted on the basis of their ethnicity will be the only ones that struggle in life. I don't know if you've ever taken a look at it, or ever studied any history, but life isn't kind to those without the knowledge to succeed.

If the minority groups want to succeed in being equals, special treatment is not the way to achieve it. That's simply discrimination against a different group. The way to succeed in life, the way to get the future you want, is to reach out and TAKE IT.

Regardless, my original statement was that for some, a college in which a large percentage of the people were admitted almost soley on the basis of their ethnicity, is not a place they want to be. Some of us want to be surrounded with others that can cut the cake. If I apply to a college and I don't get in, I'm not going to whine that it was because I was being discriminated against. I'll know that I wasn't good enough and didn't deserve to be there. That is all. Similarly, when I go to college, I expect to be surrounded by others that got in the same way I did. As for those that couldn't get in because they weren't smart enough - I couldn't care about them less. I don't care that I'm not politically correct when I say that if somebody wants to succeed, a little thing like skin color won't stop them.

If there wasn't a box to check for race, how would the Asians and Africans and Indians and South Pacific Islanders and [insert obscure ethnic group (no offense)]-ers be discriminated against in the admissions? Perhaps we should eliminate this silly concept of race and give people what they earn and only what they earn. I'd be up for that.[tab]

[JBL]

First of all, I meant percentagewise fewer. Gasp. Now go re-read what I wrote with this deeper understanding and see if it makes sense to you. Then you can criticize it.


Ready:
'equality'
versus
'equal chances'
Think about that. Think particularly about what Gauss wrote, because he is much more eloquent than I.


Also:
Accomplishments. Interesting. One of the accomplishments of a girl in my class was that she went all over the world and carried our a study that involved comparing views of highschool students in Tibet, New York, and France. That's quite an accomplishment. Personally, I couldn't have afforded the plane fares and hotel expenses to make those trips. Arguably, I could have done a better study than she did. But, obviously, I couldn't carry out anything comparable. So, is she more deserving of a place in college? Accomplishments are hardly a measure of abilities. When you can have all your math awards in a school where they don't offer the competitions, where you have no way to know about the competitions, and where the math teacher doesn't know what he is doing, then, then you can tell me accomplishments are important. Accomplishments out of context are irrelevant. Race is context.


Also: I challenge you to show me one ounce of evidence that affirmative action lowers standards. At the scale that universities accept applicants, the "ability gap" or whatever you want to call it is far to small to make any meaningful difference.


Tare -- how does it make sense to try to "look good" to a minority group at the expense of the majority group? Hardly seems like good campaigning to me -- I'd much rather have the majority of people want to vote for me than the minority.

[Tare]

Well not for political campaigns but "campaign" as in commercial to invite more people, you know slogans like "Diversity and Mixture" "Equal opportunities here!" and so on. Still I'm not criticizing the ads themselves I'm just criticizing people who makes good use of it and do it just so their thing has a better public image. I'd like to back away now...

[gauss202]

I have a lot of disagreements with your argument confuted. First of all, the claim that students admitted under affirmative action policies are unqualified to be there is completely untrue. A book that talks about this in great depth is The Shape of the River: Long Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions by William Bowen and Derek Bok, the former presidents of Harvard and Princeton Universities. They tracked the progress of thousands of affirmative action admittees over the last 25 years and showed that students who were admitted under affirmative action policies graduated at a comparable rate to their peers; and that these students went on to be equally as successful in their careers.

And that makes sense when you think about what the purpose of higher education is supposed to be!! It is to supposed to EDUCATE students, not reward them for what they did in high school. The purpose of a state university (or even private for that matter) is to serve the people of the state by producing educated people who can meet the diverse needs of the state.

Second of all, you are really over-exaggerating the number of people admitted under affirmative action anyway. If the percentage of african american students is only about 7%, and a significant portion of them would have been admitted even without AA, then we are talking about a very small percentage of the student body who were even admitted because of AA. And most selective universities like the University of Michigan actually have way more qualified applicants than they admit. So when we are talking about the last 3% or so of those admitted, there are so many qualified students at that point that any one of them could just as easily have been passed over by another qualified applicant - either black or white - for a whole host of reasons. So it's not like students with exceptional records are being passed over by unqualified students! That's just not the case.

Furthermore, it is in no way a form of reverse discrimination because there is a HUGE difference between a policy of inclusion (that affects at most maybe 3% of the student body), and an explicit policy of exclusion, that totally eliminates a whole segment of the population. If you disagree with selective policies of inclusion though, then you should also be equally against policies such as athletic scholarships and advantages, geographical diversity policies, legacy (children of alumni) advantages, and even consideration given to people who intend to major in under-represented subjects - all of which are part of most University admission systems!

Now I'm not trying to say that The U of Michigan admission system was a good one. Anyone who's seen it can tell that it was actually quite ridiculous, even without an affirmative action plan.

But here are a few questions to consider.

1.) Since everyone is supposedly created equal in terms of ability and potential, then why is it that African-Americans as a group in this country have lower admission rates to colleges and universities?

2.) What do you think are the long term consequences of such inequity if it persists?

I do actually believe that there are some valid arguments against affirmative action, but I don't think that any have been made yet in this thread.

[confuted]

I've learned over the years that arguing over the internet is pointless, so I'll just quit. You can think you convinced me or that I didn't have any more arguments, if you want.

I'll just say that I am against all those things you mentioned with the exception of the athletic scholarships (within reason), because again, that's achievement, not chance.

[rrusczyk]

The distinction of chance vs. achievement is not a convincing one in this context.

The child of rich parents gets to go to a great school that prepares kids for SAT & AMC & such & does well - say the student comes in 4th in his class, reaches the AIME, scores 1360 on the SAT, gets 5s on 4 AP exams. That's achievment, sure. What's the difference between that and the kid born in poverty in a badly broken home, with no options besides the crummy school down the street that offers no SAT prep, no APs, no AMC, etc. The kid comes in 1st in class, gets a 1020 on the SAT, never takes an AP or the AMC.

Which one has achieved more? What is the difference between these two? The difference may solely be chance - it's no great achievement to choose your parents well.

AA is a very tough issue... I agree with gauss that there are good arguments against (and am curious to hear his), but achievement vs. chance isn't one of them. (My example above, in which race is never mentioned, highlights one of my main complaints about AA - it uses race as a proxy for opportunity, which was much more appropriate right after decades of Jim Crow than it is today.)

And as for arguing over the internet - it's about as useful as arguing in person, I find. With most people, it's a useless exercise if you actually want to convince them. But arguing for your own entertainment or edification is a fine pastime.

[gauss202]

I completely agree with Richard. I've found that arguing about anything, be it on the internet or in person, usually doesn't change someone's mind about something that they're already convinced of. But in a good argument it should force both sides to at least think about their position, and hopefully, even if no one's mind is changed, figure out why they disagree. And it also might even sway someone who has not thought about the issue or made up their mind about it to one side or the other.

The biggest argument I have against affirmative action is basically the same one that Richard brought up. Namely, it's simply too blunt of an instrument for what it's trying to do. In the early days of AA, one of the biggest arguements for it was that parents who go to college overwhelmingly tend to have children who go to college. And so it was effectively a way of opening doorways to whole families that had previously been disenfranchised from quality higher education. It's was also because they realized that a major part of success in life is not just what you know, but who you know. So the ability to meet and network, and hopefully build relationships with other people who you might not otherwise meet is an integral point of college. And it allowed a point of access that had previously been denied because of segregation.

To some extent, that worked our pretty well in the beginning. As low as the percentages still are of African Americans in colleges, it is a lot higher than what it once was. The problem now is that, with integration, AA programs can't distinguish between who had access to decent resources and who didn't. So within the pool of African Americans, the ones who did have access to good resources are just outcompeting the ones who didn't - and they are the ones benefitting the most from AA . Meanwhile it's back to square one and not addressing the basic problem. That's possibly why the numbers of african americans going to college has leveled off.

And that's anther problem that I have with affirmative action, is that when you take away all of the window dressing its ultimately a feel good answer to reparations without actually calling it that. A lot of the proponents of AA are forced to sell it as something that's good in the name of diversity (which I'm sure it is), but that just obscures the real cause of the inequity in the first place and avoids the deeper issues. Meanwhile we stay a country with convenient historical amnesia.

[bleumoose]

im extremely surprised that this hasnt been addressed yet, but oh good for me, because I get to bring it up now!

i am against affirmative action (aa). for one basic reason- affirmative action occurs when a person is approximately 18, an adult by law and by society. that person has already gone through 12 years in some sort of learning environment. by the time that they apply for college, they have already been molded and taught, or, in the case of some, NOT taught. my problem with affirmative action is that its too freakin late.

affirmative action is an attempt to promote equal education for all skin tones and economic backgrounds. i respect the attempt.

the problem with it is that by the time a person gets to college, they have already recieved the bulk of their education. in inner city (yes, prodominently black) schools, this can be a problem, because funding is so low that they cannot afford to pay teachers to teach advanced courses, ap classes. for many, its a struggle to just get paper for everyday assignments. so those children are not given the opportunities they deserve, while in other parts of the same county/state/country, there are children that just drift along through their wonderful high school, in which there are so many opportunities offered to them that they dont take, wasting the luck that is given to them for being born into an upper-middle class family.

therefore, when these people begin to apply for college, the ones that did not have the opportunities are at a loss, which is what aa tries to make up for. but its just putting a bandaid on the problem, instead of fixing at the source, when there is still time. why cant the inner city kids be given an equal education when they are in grade school? why do they have to wait until college? yes, i know there are magnet schools in which opportunities are better, but there are so few, and many dont even know about them.

i guess im not really making much of an argument, more of a statement. i just want to know why all the money has to go to wasted opportunites instead of to people that can use them. BEFORE one has to turn to aa in COLLEGE.