I found a little background on Princeton parody that Rob briefly mentioned recently.
Here is an interesting little post by a law teacher back in the States. Her basic argument seems to be that taking race into consideration is good if it means that you are taking places away from non-Hispanic whites and giving it to blacks and Hispanics but bad if you are taking it away from Asians.
Whites are (depending on how you define the term) between 75% and 69% of the population of the United States (pdf) and are about 65% of the Princeton student body. Asians are only 6% of the American population but 13% of the Princeton student body. (I saw those numbers out there but lost the links. Sorry, you will have to find the data yourself.) Of course, that does not take into account the numbers of overseas students from Asia but the measure here is race, not nationality.
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“Of course, that does not take into account the numbers of overseas students from Asia but the measure here is race, not nationality.”
I’m sure oversease students make the difference. It just shows that fewer Westerners are in awe of the Ivy League schools than Asians.
elaine’s points are poorly written, illogical and not very well thought out.
and here i thought “being educated in a boarding school” was a requirement for princeton.
Following on Judge Judy’s post.
A few sentences after the wise professor lists all the different types of diversity she’s embracing she adds:
So much for that all-the-other-types-of-diversity mumbo jumbo when you’re white.
Hi Andy,
If you read and thought about the law professor’s post for a little longer, you would have realized that she makes perfect sense and that you totally misconstrued her entire point, which couldn’t be more obvious except maybe if it was in bold letters: hispanics and blacks taking away places from whites makes perfect sense, whereas whites taking away places from asians is just plain wrong.
You’re all missing the point. The inequality starts in the womb where black and Hispanic children are more likely to be born of poor mothers who did not eat properly or receive adequate prenatal care. From there, the gap widens. Educator and author Ruby Payne has published extensive research on the effects of poverty on children’s learning. The average kindergartener starts school with a lexicon of about 5,000 words. A child of poverty may know only 1,000. Middle-class children receive a positive/negative feedback ratio of 5:1. For poor children, it is reversed. Research also shows that children who do not master the fundamentals of reading by the end of second grade will never catch up.
Affirmative action in university admissions is just a Band-Aid. What we really need is a national commitment to help poor children grow up happy, healthy, and well educated.
JW,
I read the whole thing and what you wrote is not substantially different that what I wrote.
(BTW, if you wrote that as a joke it was a little too dead pan for me and almost slid right by.)
Sonagi,
The only way the cycle of poverty is to be broken is by less affirmative action and less welfare. We create this hammock for the poor to swing in while we wallow in our white guilt. The poor will never care to earn anything, knowledge included, as long as we give it away.
Andy,
Your basic gist: According to affirmative action, blacks and hispanics taking places away from whites is ok, so blacks and hispanics taking places away from asians should be ok too. (if this is not your point, your writing is ambiguous)
Law professor: But asians are competing with whites, not blacks and hispanics. So when overqualified asians are denied entrance, it is likely that they are rejected in favor of white students on considerations irrelevant to merit. Which is illegal.
Clear enough for you?
Sonagi, you are a socialist. Everbody the same but miserable? Take from the rich and give to the poor . . . blah, blah, blah. What exactly are you suggesting? The world’s smartest economists and technocrats can’t even agree on what proverty is. What happens if you give someone a fair shot at life but the person for various reasons does not seize it? How about sports? After all it does not seem right that one player gets millions while the others toil at mininum wages. Yeah, real bright, Mr. Parrot= Sonagi.
railway charm wrote:
The only way the cycle of poverty is to be broken is by less affirmative action and less welfare. We create this hammock for the poor to swing in while we wallow in our white guilt. The poor will never care to earn anything, knowledge included, as long as we give it away.
By “a national commitment to help poor children grow up happy, healthy, and well educated,” I don’t mean giving money directly to poor families. I mean investing in programs proven success, like Head Start. Most districts offer some kind or preschool for children who demonstrate language, physical, or behavioral needs. These classes really help kids prepare for kindergarten, and I can see a difference between kids who went to preschool and kids who didn’t. Many districts also offer after-school remediation and homework help for kids from homes where the caregiver cannot provide academic support. These kids would fall behind even further without this extra support. My community sponsors free parenting classes that are open to anyone. These classes were created especially to help young people of low income who are often the children of young parents themselves and may not have had good role models.
People are like businesses: invest wisely and society prospers.
Sonagi, would it surprise you to learn that in pure numbers, the greatest number of poor in the United States are white? I haven’t looked at this in over five years, but I doubt the numbers have shifted that much. So, should a poor Black or Hispanic be given priority over an equally poor White? And should a White female from the middle or upper classes be given a “diversity quota” that puts her on the same level with Black and Hispanic applicants?
I understand that Princeton is a private institution and may craft the admission policies it wishes, within certain guidlines. But as to public institutions: If the law is not equal for all, it is equal for none.
No, Lirelou, I am not surprised to know that a majority of poor Americans are white. My family was working poor. I do not like diversity quotas because, as I said, they are a Band-Aid solution that does not address the root problem. Admitting Blacks and Hispanics who are less qualified for the sake of diversity does not begin to deal with the issue of WHY there is a large achievement gap. University admissions preferences are an artificial means of papering over the gap when it is too late to close it.
If you’re worried about the poor, give a hand to poor folks in college admission (or better yet in tuition options), but keep race the hell out of such calculations. That will focus on poverty and not race, and avoid reverse discrimination.
Parents have to care, It is not the job of the GOV!
Demand for EVERY spot at top schools far exceeds supply, so every person who gets in takes a spot from someone else. My biz school had a class of 48% Canadians, 52% international students, which, although half a dozen other schools had classes of 48-51% foreign students, let McGill claim “The most international MBA in Canada”, which is a fairly attractive marketing point in attracting good students. I know of no school that markets itself saying “We take only the top GRE/GMAT/SAT/LSAT scores, with no regard to anything else.” There is a student-driven demand for high diversity, whether mandated by affirmative action laws or not.
Universities also take much longer views of time than most other organizations. How many tens of billions is Harvard’s alumni fund worth now? As a matter of simple self-preservation, schools try to plant alumni seedlings around the world, and of course they look for active, high-growth, high-innovation regions as attractive places to plant alumni. For now, that certainly means Asia. Admissions committees have many concerns to balance…
Sonagi, inequality starts in the family. Mothers don’t even love their children equally. If a child shows some talent, parents invest in the talent and if not–then you out of luck. State intervention to what level? All the way to how a family should be run–who the hell are you–the state secretariat of family planning. You allowed those dumb a*s sensitive educators get to you. The ideal right of man is the right to earn a living in peace you pony tailed, wonder bread eating, liberal hippie.
Someguy wrote: “I’m sure oversease students make the difference. It just shows that fewer Westerners are in awe of the Ivy League schools than Asians.”
I’m not sure how you drew such a quick conclusion like that. It MIGHT be because those of Asian descent (be they American or living in Asia) study harder for the SATs and in high school to GET into Princeton and other Ivy League schools. Ever thought of that?
It might be because of lying and cheating. Ever thought of that?
I know I was one of the few Asians in my high school (in America) and I was one of the FEW to take out a study guide and study YEARS before taking the standardized test, the SAT. My parents, native Korean immigrants, saw to it that I did my studying during my summer days each year…..and used a legimate study guide bought at a book store. And I was hardly an unusual Asian-American. Needless to say, I and the few other Asians in my class did better than most of the other students, both white and black, in my high school.
So….you’re saying I and other Americans of Korean descent who did well on our standardized tests relative to the rest of our American peers did so because we CHEATED? Unbelievable. Maybe STUDYING had something to do with it! Ever thought about that??
Maybe it did, maybe not. I didn’t study one iota, so I don’t know how it would have mattered if I had studied.
There weren’t any gyopos in the room when I took the SAT, so who am I to judge your cheating skills?
“There weren’t any gyopos in the room when I took the SAT, so who am I to judge your cheating skills?”
Keep digging your own hole and showing your own ignorance.
BTW, studying for the SATs DOES help and is highly recommended. In my 11th grade English class, our teacher attempted to teach us the vocabulary words in the Barron’s study guide SOLD IN PUBLIC BOOKSTORES that were recommended study material for SAT takers. I already knew all the words. I had already studied and memorized them during the previous two summer vacations. While the rest of my classmates spent their vacations just staying home watching TV or goofing around outside, I studied an hour a day under the watchful eye of my parents and THEN played, and I am glad I did it. My older brother, who went through the same regimen as me, got a near perfect score on the SATs (I think he missed two questions), and it was because he studied PLUS had a thorough knowledge of Latin to derive the meaning of words and because he retained everything he read, including the meaning of new vocabulary words. Plus, they didn’t have enough math classes at our high school for us to continue to learn, so my brother actually had to attend the university nearby as a senior in high school in order to continue to learn. The American schools we attended couldn’t keep up with the studying we did in our own time. No one in our community was surprised at my family’s academic success because everyone knew we studied and worked hard. Plus, to the white and black members of the community, perhaps there was the prejudice (rightfully or wrongfully) they had that Asians were just brighter academically. I doubt we were “brighter”….we just studied harder. It got to the point that we knew more calculus than the calculus teacher, which says a lot about the American education system at that time.
So I have cheating skills because I’m a kyopo, huh? You’re pathetic.
And exactly how DOES one cheat for the SATs in America? It’s virtually impossible. Maybe, just MAYBE Matt, we kicked *ss in school and on our college boards because we studied. Does this truth hurt too much for you to accept?
My bad…my comment was addressed to Mark, not Matt. Sorry for the error.
Matt, Mark, who cares? All white people are the same, aren’t they?
Response to #8,
JW,
Can I assume then that your first comment was NOT a joke?
Your take on the professor’s argument can only work if she is ignorant of how affirmative action works (I doubt she is.)
Set-asides are illegal: You can’t say, for example, that Princeton will take 11% black and 12% Hispanic students each year. So the idea there are two tiers of admission, one for blacks and Hispanics and another for whites and Asians, is simply false.
But you can take make race a factor in selecting students if those students are from underrepresented groups. (That same factor also allows gives whites a relatively easy shot at getting into historically black universities.) Those gains for underrepresented groups must come from overrepresented groups and nobody is more overrepresented at Princeton than Asians (as I noted, whites are actually a little underrepresented there).
The only way to say that Asians are competing with non-Hispanic whites but not blacks or Hispanics would be to count Asians as white (in other words, to administratively erase the distinction between whites and Asians and count them as one group).
In summery, her basic argument seems to be that taking race into consideration is good if it means that you are taking places away from non-Hispanic whites and giving it to blacks and Hispanics but bad if you are taking it away from Asians.
(BTW, sorry about the late reply. I am still on vacation.)
(That same factor also allows gives whites a relatively easy shot at getting into historically black universities.)
Simple solution: Put the whites in the back of the class. People of color will get better seats and it will prevent cheating on exams.