Supreme Court on College Admissions
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galt ...@hotmail.com (Dave)
"Government has a compelling interest in promoting racial diversity on campus, but the undergraduate school's admissions policy is not the way to get there, the court majority said. [We can simply hire them to work in the kitchens and to maintain the campus, empty the trash, mop the floors, mow the lawns, and thus provide a very adequate minority presence on campus.]" "The university's policy, which automatically distributes 20 points, or one-fifth of the points needed to guarantee admission, to every single underrepresented minority applicant solely because of race, is [grossly unfair and is allowing in so many minority students that they are now the majority]," Rehnquist [old white guy] wrote.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=1&u=/ap/2003062...
"Roger" roge...@hotmail.com
I wonder why you left out the beginning of the story you quote: By ANNE GEARAN, ***ociated Press Writer WASHINGTON - In two split decisions, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that minority applicants may be given an edge when applying for admissions to universities, but limited how much a factor race can play in the selection of students.
The high court struck down a point system used by the University of Michigan, but did not go as far as opponents of affirmative action had wanted. The court approved a separate program used at the University of Michigan law school that gives race less prominence in the admissions decision-making process.
...
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=1&u=/ap/2003062...
The Frog jmattNOS...@ticnet.com
It is simply a matter of fairness. All one must do to see the injustice of this is turn the tables and ask yourself if it would be just as fair to give points simply because one was a White person.
The argument that we need government sanctioned racism(AA) is one that, in the long run, doesn't help minorites. It must also be insulting to hear that your race cannot compete and needs special help.
This country will not get over race as an issue until we decide as a culture to get over it. No one seems to want to do that. They say the field is not level, but they have no milestone they can give you in advance so that you can tell when it is. However, THEY will know it when it happens and will tell you......just trust them.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ "The multicultural project will never fully succeed if 'diversity' is defined as one's own preferred ideologies and political groups." --Richard E. Redding, "Grappling With Diverse Conceptions of Diversity," American Psychologist, April 2002, p. 301.
Freewheeling addressatbottomofp...@bigfoot.com
What is not being stated is that the ongoing need for quotas and quota-like systems is caused by an educational achievement gap between blacks and whites (omitting the Asians and Hispanics for the moment), of about a standard deviation. So if admission were conducted purely on the basis of merit very few blacks would be admitted.
Tied to that are a couple of other misconceptions and errors that people don't discuss, and that therefor tend to cloud judgment. The first is that the educational system is either to blame for the ongoing achievement gap or can, somehow, "cure" it. The second is the fear that the achievement gap is due to some underlying genetic inadequacy.
The truth: 1. The achievement gap is *not* due, in any significant sense, to our elementary and secondary education system; nor can that system "fix" or close the gap significantly. He have known this since the Coleman Commission some 40 years ago, and nothing has happened that would discredit that study's findings. Indeed, almost everything we've discovered about elementary and secondary education upholds the finding that it's what students *bring to* school that's important.
Moreover, these simply is no resource or instructional expenditure gap between black and what students. The 1996 National ***essment of Education Progress found that black students where slightly better funded than either Hispanic or White students nationwide.
2. The gap is also not due to any underlying genetic deficit of the black population in the US. In fact, one piece of critical evidence is that the pattern of the closing of the achievement gap from the 1970s to the late 1980s evidenced for all age groups precisely corresponds to a nearly identical pattern for the IQs of four-year-olds who have *not yet entered school*. So it's obvious that IQ is malleable, and that the gap between blacks and whites responds to something. The question is: what?
A number of studies using the National Longitudinal Study of Youth and other similar studies that track early childhood risk factors that are family related demonstrates that most of the racial IQ gap of about 17 points (slightly larger than a standard deviation) is due to influences during early childhood (age 0 to 3) including single-parenthood, birth weight, educational attainment of the parents (especially the mother), and other family characteristics. The most important factors were cognitive stimulation (essentially "parental instruction") and emotional support.
So, the fact is that we've simply been concentrating resources on the wrong age demographic. There is reason to believe that if we were to concentrate resources BOTH on creating a better family environment (including discouraging single parenthood), combined possibly with childcare programs that attempted to supply some of the cognitive simulation and emotional support that appears to be missing for economically disadvantage children of all races the achievement gap would disappear completely in 2 to 3 generations. We could then retire this whole issue of racial favoritism in college admissions.
Now, this policy perspective is something that both liberals and conservatives can agree on... and in fact *do* agree on. The details might be a bit contentious, and especially the priority placed on the under-three age group as opposed to older groups now under Head Start (which, in general, does not change IQ or normed achievement long term). But the state of research is so conclusive on this, and the implications so obvious, that almost any compromise will have a profound effect as long is it addresses the proper risk factors.
There is, in other words, some truth to the notion that "it takes a village," if for no other reason than that resources available to families, and deficits in child rearing practices, clearly should not be allowed to harm children who are not responsible for the life decisions their parents make, and should not be harmed by those decisions. The extent to which "the village" intrudes on parental prerogatives in order to correct these problems, as advocates for very young children, will no doubt be sensitive. But almost any reasonable effort we make will yield a big improvement.
The Frog jmattNOS...@ticnet.com
On Mon, 23 Jun 2003 13:03:30 -0400, Freewheeling An interesting post......thanks.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ "The multicultural project will never fully succeed if 'diversity' is defined as one's own preferred ideologies and political groups." --Richard E. Redding, "Grappling With Diverse Conceptions of Diversity," American Psychologist, April 2002, p. 301.
galt ...@hotmail.com (Dave)
We've had government sponsored racism for hundreds of years. Now a few generations of remedial bias in the opposite direction and you want to cry foul and pretend it never happened.
Freewheeling addressatbottomofp...@bigfoot.com
The problem is that it may not be (and probably isn't in the long run) "remedial," and there's a significant amount of evidence that it makes race relations worse going all the way back to an article by David Armor (a member of the Coleman Commission) published in *Public Opinion*. I think there's good reason to insist that higher education become diverse, not just ethnically but in terms of ideas (although in the latter sense Marxisants seem to have a lock on teaching positions, especially in the humanities). But this is largely unrelated to any "remedial" function. To put it simply, it just doesn't remedy anything. And more importantly the primary "disadvantage" under which black aspirants suffer is not race discrimination, but poor aptitude.
And this, in turn, is not related to elementary/secondary education, but to conditions in the home up to age 3, according to the latest research conducted on a long term longitudinal study of youth. So the bottom line is that if you really want a remedial effort that can make a difference (or even a complete turnaround) in a couple of generations you're way too late if you focus on college, not to mention high school, elementary school or even preschool programs.
Once children have become older than about 3 or 4 you're just too late.
Besides, remedial efforts that go on longer than two generations aren't even superficially remedial, they're punitive and free riding.
galt ...@hotmail.com (Dave)
Tell that to black college applicants.
Them uppity blacks have no aptitude. They can't compete well against white students whose college-educated parents have been tutoring them all their lives.
Certainly. I agree.
Says who? The cronies of GW Bush? Old white men?
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