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shannon_aIn his response to one of my posts yesterday, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seidl commented on the fact that he generally agreed with "President" Bush jr's take on affirmative action. I started to write a comment explaining in more depth why I think it's unfair, but it turned out to be long enough that I decided it deserved its own entry.
The real question at the heart of affirmative action is: what's your *true* criteria for admitting students to a college campus?
Are you admitting them because of intelligence?
Are you admitting them because of their likelihood to succeed in college?
Are you admitting them because of their ability to succeed at arbitrary tasks?
Are you admitting them because of their likelihood to have a beneficial effect on society in the future?
Are you admitting them as part of an attempt to create racial equality in this country?
I think it's easy for a white person to look on affirmative action as "punishment". To be honest I did when I was in high school, working my ass off to get into college. From what I knew about affirmative action then, it felt to me like I was seeing decreased opportunity to reach my aspirations because of something shitty my great, great grandparents might have done.
I now think that impression is actually a lot of rhetoric, because affirmitive action's not about redressing (or punishing) past wrongs; it's about addressing real issues in our current society.
Students who are black, Mexican, American-indian or other races that benefit from affirmative action tend to, on average, grow up in poorer neighborhoods. This is a direct result of their depressed financial equality in our modern society.
Because of the ways in which taxes are collected to pay for public schools this means that the schools attended by the students who tend to benefit from affirmative action are generally grossly underfunded. This in turn results in larger class sizes, less competent teachers, fewer academic activities outside of classes, and few or no college prep classes.
And in turn, because of the fact that most colleges base admissions upon knowledge, education, and general college preparation, the students who tend to benefit from affirmative action are less likely to get into colleges with competitive admissions.
Which goes back to my original question on what criteria you use for admission ...
If you're admitting to college on the basis of the ability to succeed at fairly arbitrary tasks (essays, standardized tasks), then no further adjustment is needed; you're doing a great job.
If you're admitting to college on the basis of likelihood to succeed at college, then you may or may not be doing a good job. I have seen studies claiming that students admitted to colleges via affirmative action on average don't do as well at college as others, because of that exact lack of college preparation, but those studies tend to come from conservative think tanks, so they're somewhat suspect. Like I said, I can't say for sure if standard admissions, without affirmative action, succeed on this criteria or not.
But I do believe that if you're using any of the other criteria I outlined for accepting students into college, you totally fail in our current educational atmosphere without using affirmative action to help out. Neither intelligence nor the ability to have a beneficial effect on society in the future is going to be adequately mapped by an admissions process which discriminates against students from poorer schools. And without affirmative action you clearly aren't going to be able to start manipulating the way that racial equality is represented in this country.
After thinking it through, can you really say that it's unfair or "punishment" to admit a young American Indian student to college instead of you if he got lower test scores, had lower grades, but by our best (if uncertain) estimation is more likely to have a beneficial effect on society that you are?
Personally, especially when you're talking about state-sponsored educational institutions, I think their first goal should be the betterment of the society, and that's ultimately going to come about by educating the people who have the best possibilities to really help society out, and also by using education as tool to address current societal wrongs ... and those are both criteria that depend upon affirmative action to work.
Getting back to Bush, for just a second, he's trying to push half-assed admission adjustment methods which provide educational advantages to disadvantaged students without basing it on race. Frankly I think that's an attempt to play to the racism inherit in the Republican party. The problem isn't just poverty, it's racially caused poverty, and the best way to address that is through racially adjusted methods. After all, even with education a very intelligent person from an affirmative action group will still be at a competitive disadvantage in society, while a poor man with that same intelligence and education might not be.
It's about effective government through addressing the problem not something peripheral to the problem, latched upon just to please a disgusting faction of your political party.
seidl commented on the fact that he generally agreed with "President" Bush jr's take on affirmative action. I started to write a comment explaining in more depth why I think it's unfair, but it turned out to be long enough that I decided it deserved its own entry.The real question at the heart of affirmative action is: what's your *true* criteria for admitting students to a college campus?
Are you admitting them because of intelligence?
Are you admitting them because of their likelihood to succeed in college?
Are you admitting them because of their ability to succeed at arbitrary tasks?
Are you admitting them because of their likelihood to have a beneficial effect on society in the future?
Are you admitting them as part of an attempt to create racial equality in this country?
I think it's easy for a white person to look on affirmative action as "punishment". To be honest I did when I was in high school, working my ass off to get into college. From what I knew about affirmative action then, it felt to me like I was seeing decreased opportunity to reach my aspirations because of something shitty my great, great grandparents might have done.
I now think that impression is actually a lot of rhetoric, because affirmitive action's not about redressing (or punishing) past wrongs; it's about addressing real issues in our current society.
Students who are black, Mexican, American-indian or other races that benefit from affirmative action tend to, on average, grow up in poorer neighborhoods. This is a direct result of their depressed financial equality in our modern society.
Because of the ways in which taxes are collected to pay for public schools this means that the schools attended by the students who tend to benefit from affirmative action are generally grossly underfunded. This in turn results in larger class sizes, less competent teachers, fewer academic activities outside of classes, and few or no college prep classes.
And in turn, because of the fact that most colleges base admissions upon knowledge, education, and general college preparation, the students who tend to benefit from affirmative action are less likely to get into colleges with competitive admissions.
Which goes back to my original question on what criteria you use for admission ...
If you're admitting to college on the basis of the ability to succeed at fairly arbitrary tasks (essays, standardized tasks), then no further adjustment is needed; you're doing a great job.
If you're admitting to college on the basis of likelihood to succeed at college, then you may or may not be doing a good job. I have seen studies claiming that students admitted to colleges via affirmative action on average don't do as well at college as others, because of that exact lack of college preparation, but those studies tend to come from conservative think tanks, so they're somewhat suspect. Like I said, I can't say for sure if standard admissions, without affirmative action, succeed on this criteria or not.
But I do believe that if you're using any of the other criteria I outlined for accepting students into college, you totally fail in our current educational atmosphere without using affirmative action to help out. Neither intelligence nor the ability to have a beneficial effect on society in the future is going to be adequately mapped by an admissions process which discriminates against students from poorer schools. And without affirmative action you clearly aren't going to be able to start manipulating the way that racial equality is represented in this country.
After thinking it through, can you really say that it's unfair or "punishment" to admit a young American Indian student to college instead of you if he got lower test scores, had lower grades, but by our best (if uncertain) estimation is more likely to have a beneficial effect on society that you are?
Personally, especially when you're talking about state-sponsored educational institutions, I think their first goal should be the betterment of the society, and that's ultimately going to come about by educating the people who have the best possibilities to really help society out, and also by using education as tool to address current societal wrongs ... and those are both criteria that depend upon affirmative action to work.
Getting back to Bush, for just a second, he's trying to push half-assed admission adjustment methods which provide educational advantages to disadvantaged students without basing it on race. Frankly I think that's an attempt to play to the racism inherit in the Republican party. The problem isn't just poverty, it's racially caused poverty, and the best way to address that is through racially adjusted methods. After all, even with education a very intelligent person from an affirmative action group will still be at a competitive disadvantage in society, while a poor man with that same intelligence and education might not be.
It's about effective government through addressing the problem not something peripheral to the problem, latched upon just to please a disgusting faction of your political party.
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My opinion on affirmative action
Date: 2003-01-16 01:10 pm (UTC)Hey, I just wanted to weigh in against affirmative action. I know that I'm not considered to be on the side of the angels here when I do so, but it is how I feel.
I do agree with you that the purpose of state-sponsored educational institutions should be to better society through preparing students to be useful members of that society, but I disagree with your statement that a member of a minority is more likely to benefit society be getting an education than a white person. I think understand the principle that you're stating--that an educated minority who succeeds will help to redress the social wrongs of racism, whereas an educated white person won't, or won't as much, etc.
However, I think that you're making the mistake of treating people solely as the product of the racial upbringing, which is an attitude I find frustrating at times when talking to people who are pro-affirmative-action. I believe in trying to create a society which is as colorblind as possible, by establishing criteria which are as objective as possible for "merit," and punishing proven cases of bias stringently.
I actually agree with the position you state for Bush, that affirmative action should be based upon poverty, not upon racial background; it seems silly to me to award my friend Julie, who is from a comfortably middle-class background and has, by her own admission, faced little racism in her career (in her opinion), affirmative action dollars and to deny them to my friend Choonpiaw, who is from a refugee family from Singapore and who faces prejudice for his "foreign" appearance and accent all the time. Julie's mulatto, and 'Piaw is Chinese.
I suppose my beliefs about affirmative action do come down to "two wrongs don't make a right." I've heard the statistics for many years about how affirmative action students don't do as well at colleges as non-affirmative-action students; they're especially prevalent here on the Cal campus in discussions on the subject, and the idea does follow logically from the premise (affirmative action students are less well-prepared due to poverty and racism than white students, so need extra help to compete for admission--doesn't that mean they'd need extra help to compete for success, too, because they're less well-prepared--and thus, more likely to fail?). It seems to me that telling minoroty students that they're not as good as white students, so they need to sit on the special bus, is harmful to their self-image and to the respect they should receive from their fellows. Telling middle-class educated black Americans that they're unable to compete with their white or Asian peers seems to be a subtle form of racism on its own.
Where does it end? The idea still treats white people as victimizers and minorities as the victimized, regardless of the realities of a particular student's upbringing (I think poor white trash face classism and prejudice in academia, for example--try delivering a serious academic paper in a Southern accent). I feel it contributes to the racial balkanization of society and encourages people to view one another not as fellow Americans, but as competing racial groups (witness the tensions between Asian-Americans and African-Americans over admissions policies and affirmative action). And yes, the fact that it denies marginal white students, who are the majority of students, after all, education dollars and places in good colleges which their efforts have earned them, bothers me. Two wrongs and all.
Do I know how to fix it? No. Something addressing the educational history of one's homeplace, the record of one's high school, the wealth of one's family and the educational background of one's parents seems to be, in my opinion, a more fair system than simply the color of one's skin, though. White kids from the Ozarks probably need more help to succeed and improve their families' places in society than kids from Kensington with Hispanic last names. Black kids from Watts probably need more help than black kids from Bel Air. *shrug* Just my opinion, as a token liberal who doesn't support affirmative action anymore.
Re: My opinion on affirmative action
Date: 2003-01-17 10:46 am (UTC)Not actually what I intended to say, and I disagree with it too.
I think you might be responding to my query about if you'd think it was unfair for a minority who was shown to benefit society more got a chance to get into a better college before you. That's not saying anything ipso facto, other than the fact that the SATs and high school grades aren't a good measure for this goal.
How you actually figure out if person A is going to benefit society more than person B is a hard question. Affirmative action is an attempt to do so, by weighting unfair biases.
I suppose my beliefs about affirmative action do come down to "two wrongs don't make a right."
I've heard that view before and I honestly think it's propaganda that breaks down in the light of examination. Affirmative action can only be considered a "wrong" if it's punishment.
However, if you instead look at it as an attempt to counterbalance or offweigh currently societal inequities, it seems pretty clearly to me to be a "right". It's a balance--a weighting--done at a gross, statistical level.
In any case, thanks for the well-reasoned and considered response.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-16 02:06 pm (UTC)This seems like a great argument for spending of federal education dollars. Don't spread them evenly, focus on making some good spots to let the goodness spread. That I can generally agree with.
But I'm much less sure that applies for collage admissions. I can definitely see weighting some things differently based on background. Like just because one student has a few Ap classes shouldn't immediately elevate them over someone who doesn't. As the person who doesn't might simply have not had the option of those classes.
But to go back to skin color just seems to me to be ... wrong. That its o.k. to discriminate as long as its against white men basicly. I just want people to be treated equally. Now, I know this won't actually happen in my lifetime, and that some excesses may be needed to move toward the ideal, but to me any state sanctioned discrimination is still bad. Should a woman (who have a history of job discrimination) get more family leave to care for an ill family member than a man? How about someone with remote relatives. Should they get longer vacations since they'll have to travel farther. Hmmm. There was a point here but I seem to have kinda lost it.
So, yes. If they wanted to add in something about the socio-economic background of the students applying, taking into account how well they would be able to manage to process the course load at a top tier university, then I'd be fine with it probably. Not necessarialy for a huge percentage of the incoming freshman class, but at least for a part of it. But thats still race/color/sex blind.
Hmmm. If it is true that affirmative action admits are less likely to graduate (not saying it is or isn't true, just taking it as true for now), I could see using this fact to open additional places on the admisions roster. Something like schools do for graduate admissions. You want to have X people in the school in general. If Mr. Super White Preppy is sure to come and will graduate if he does come, he would take up one of those person slots. If Mr. Less sure of comes, but you think he won't make it the whole way through, he would be less than a full slot. Your freshman classes would be large, but with an attrit rate to keep the school class size from getting too big. Of course, I assume most smaller schools already do something like this. Cal is probably to big though.
It is a touchy subject. And I haven't read up on umich, its policies, or the specific objections. So I'm not sure of all the details in this specific case. I just guess overall I come down against any race based profiling like this. Bush has done plenty of other really stupid things over the last few years to keep me busy filling out petitions. I'll have to leave this issue alone.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-17 10:54 am (UTC)That's an argument that I can understand. It's possible that if such a program were launched nationally, it might make some of the same difference. One of the problems, however, is that the argument isn't usually A or B, but rather A or !A, and that leaves the problem unaddressed.
However, I think the main reason I'd come down on the side of affirmative action rather than a socio-economic basis is the issue of cause and effect. Racism and racial inequality are diseases. Poverty is a symptom. We might manage to solve this particular issue by just treating the symptom (ie, admitting based on poverty), but isn't it that much more likely if we treat the disease (ie, admitting based on race)?
It's a hot-button political issue, which is unfortunate, because it should really be in the court of non-partisan researchers who can really figure out which works betters.
I think the real problem is that Republicans at the national level use opposition to affirmative action as a tool to increase their support among racists and then try and use the issue of socioeconomic selection as a sop to still hold on to minority support. And, as long as that's happening, no truly informed decision is going to get made.
Good points, Shannon!
Date: 2003-01-17 12:19 pm (UTC)1) the case that the White House just intervened in was misrepresented by Bush in his statements (I'm not saying this was intentional, but he didn't have all the info). The law school doesn't have "quotas", and race is just one factor that they take into account.
2) Schools provide preferential treatment all the time, for reasons having nothing to do with race. If you're an athlete, the child of an alumnus, etc., you *will* be treated differently. You're more likely to get in for reasons that have nothing to do with merit. What about this practice? (You won't hear a lot about it from Dubya, for obvious reasons ;-) )
Finally, I just hate hate HATE seeing all the backbiting and infighting that goes on. If we spent enough money, and spent it WELL, on our schools, so we could reach children early enough in life, more of them would get into university in the first place...
some interesting links...
Bush's stance on lawsuit upsets Lehman
The Truth About Affirmative Action (from BET)
a different approach...
Achieving race-blind affirmative admissions
Re: Good points, Shannon!
Date: 2003-01-17 01:45 pm (UTC)Thanks.
Affirmative Action
Date: 2003-02-20 05:51 am (UTC)You can't say that just because someone is a certain skin color, they have been prejudiced against, whereas those with another skin color have not. It is absolutely possible for a white person to face prejudice as well. How can your idea of affirmative action help assuage the evils of prejudice when it is committed against a 'majority' (what else can you call the opposite of a minority? *ponder*).
My viewpoint has been shaped in part from living for quite some time in Germany, where they have no racially-motivated laws at all. You are either German or not-German. Whether your family has lived in Germany for 400 years, or you are a Turkish immigrant who naturalized the week before makes no difference under the law. There are, of course, laws designed to help people in trouble, but these are based on socio-economic grounds, not racial ones.
Race and skin color alone cannot tell us if a person is more or less deserving to be admitted into college, or to receive aid at said college. What about a white person who grew up in a ghetto? Should he receive less aid than a black person who grew up in a middle-to-high income area and who had many more opportunities?
How can we begin to defuse racism, when we have racism written into our laws?
Thank you, by the way, for one of the more intelligent discourses about this topic I have heard.