| Topic Name: |
what is the employment situation for minorities |
| Message Name: |
Is it fair? |
| Date Posted: |
10/23/2000 |
| In Reply To: |
The reason your buddies didn't make it into the honor's ranking was because they were admitted with lower grades/scores than white classmates. They were inferior students. Your point about marginal white students being bumped to lower schools is well taken. But ask yourself this question, "Is it fair?"
When anyone gets preference because of race it is wrong.
Reverse Racism = Affirmative Action |
| Message: |
That's a good question. I think the rhetorical position of opponents of AA is pretty strong on its face, because it is rooted in the concept that people should be judged without regard to minority status. But I think the reality of things is much more complex than that. Admissions officers at high end law schools see a lot of people with great numbers. But no law school has ever (at least since admissions to law schools became competitive) admitted solely on the basis of "intelligence" as represented in numbers. I ended up in a few ivy league schools after growing up and going to public university in the midwest -- and when I got to ivy I saw that there was a LOT of AA going on. AA for legacies, AA for minorities, and probably even AA for me since I came from out of nowhere (at least in the mindset of a myopic east coaster). Since admissions has never been and never will be a simple matter of crunching numbers, the question really becomes "what do we want our student body to look like?" And given that that is the question, I don't have a beef with admissions counsellors giving an edge to a people who have not historically had access to education and power. You ask if AA is fair. I reply that basing part of an admissions decision on race is no less fair than basing it on geography, on where your parents went to school, or your interesting life story, or anything else that is not purely numeric.
I think it cannot be seriously contested, however, that the great flaw of AA is that it is very limited in its penetration of minority society. As I said earlier, the bulk of the minority beneficiaries of AA I saw were as much a part of the east coast private school elite as their white comrades. To my mind, means testing is essential to make AA real -- it is unfortunate that AA seems to be helping a lot of people who don't need the extra help. Unfortunate, yes, but very correctible within the AA paradigm.
If I looked at the world your way, I'd be sitting here stewing all day that AA kept me out of Yale. With my numbers, if I were a minority there is no question I would have been admitted to Yale. But you know what? I made do with a somewhat less prestigous school, and my life is just fine.
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