you don't know your state as much as whole paragraphs from "Wiki."

Since YOU actually live there and go to school in the state system, did they also get rid of legacies and donor points?

Most schools with such point systems also give point boosts to other groups -- like veterans. Do you think those bonus points should be taken away as well? Or do you recognize that academic scores are but one measure of a student and a school in search of a well-rounded student body would be poorly served by going on test scores alone?

Not getting into the U of M law school ruined her life? Really.

Here's an excellent, balanced article on the case:
http://docket.medill.northwestern.ed...ves/000696.php

Once again, I agree that in the long run race should cease to be a factor in admissions, as we get farther and farther from the economically meaningful discrimination of the past. But in the short-run, it can be a reasonable factor to consider as a school attempts to provide opportunity to groups that have historically had limited opportunity, and to build a student body large and diverse enough to expose its students to viewpoints and issues they may not have encountered before but which they will encounter out in the real world.

The real question is "at what point should race cease to be a factor?" Nobody's addressing that.

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Man up.

[quote]No - the country is not well served by any irrationality in government. Veterans are owed a reward by our country, which can be and is such things as tuition reimbursement, but it's absurd to pretend they are more competent than they are, which is the essence of "affirmative action".

I think this "well-rounded" stuff is feeble, and it's not a "measure", ie, something that can be objectively quantified. When someone employs a plumber, do they ask if he's "well-rounded", or if he has proof that he's a certified plumber? But it's worse than that, as in the case of the U of M law school, when they used fuzzy, non-quantifiable, subjective criteria - that's exactly how the law school got away with discrimination but the undergraduate school didn't (for a time).

Oh yeah - I see your point. Worked hard in high school, got the grades. Worked hard in university - got the grades. Took the LSAT - scored high. Had the door slammed in her face because she's white, and now she's complaining? B_tchy, b_tchy.

This is the standard academic establishment take on the issue, supporting anti-white discrimination by those who are immune from it themselves.

Besides regurgitating the meaningless "diversity" notion, you approve a system that discriminates against hard-working, academically achieving economically deprived white students, in favor of middle class so-so black students. You approve a system that penalizes white students who are absolutely not responsible for anything that happened to blacks in the past.
The idea that white students need to be discriminated against so that the ones who do get in can have a "diverse" viewpoint is ridiculous. Do they read the newspapers? Do they watch TV? Do they have internet access? This diversity garbage is just another bogus argument in the long list of bogus arguments the liberal academic establishment has come up with to support their predetermined goal of anti-white discrimination. It obliterates the Equal Protection Clause, one of the most fundamental precepts in the Constitution.

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Blade: "more educated and literate people than Justabubba"

Justabubba: "that would include everyone"

http://politicalforum.com/showthread.php?t=27847

At least you're consistent.

True, but your method would result in schools stratified by test scores. What about life experience? What about intangibles? What about people for whom test scores don't actually measure their potential? There's nothing magical about test scores. While they serve a purpose, the history of academia is replete with people who scored absurdly high on tests but were functionally incapable in their chosen field.

My dad, now retired, was a prominent chemical-engineering professor. He can reel off a list of his graduate students that had perfect undergraduate academic records and high test scores, yet couldn't actually perform PhD-quality work because they lacked discipine, or creativity, or vision. They were great lab technicians, but lousy scientists. Many of his most successful doctoral students were actually pretty mediocre students, relatively speaking (you still have to be pretty bright to get a CE doctorate), but had those intangibles that made them outstanding scientists.

College isn't a trade school, turning out plumbers. And even then, my wife the remodeling contractor can tell you the difference between a bad certified plumber and a good one -- and it's intangibles like work quality, work ethic, problem-solving ability, experience, knowledge and creativity.

None of this has anything to do with race, of course. But you have to concede that intangibles ("fuzzy criteria", as you call them) have a legitimate place in determining an applicant's success, whether they're applying for a job or an academic slot.

Didn't say she didn't have a right to complain. I said your description of her fate is way over the top.


Uh-huh.

If the alternative were an all-white student body constructed solely on the basis of test scores, yes. A diverse student body containing diverse viewpoints and cultural experiences *is* a legitimate goal for a school to pursue. But when it comes to redressing historical discrimination, I don't think advantaged middle-class blacks should get any more consideration than advantaged middle-class whites. Reserve the hands-up for people who actually need it.

Arguably, you approve a system whereby blacks still suffering from the lingering effects of past discrimination are told "too bad."

Which is why, as I've said repeatedly, most of this discussion is just so much noise obscuring the two points that really ought to be addressed first:

1. How about sidestepping the whole problem by basing preferential treatment on economics rather than race?

2. If we can't do #1, then at what point can we declare the historical debt paid, and what criteria do we use to determine when that point has been reached?

Because all the arguing in the world -- at least as far as "redressing historical discrimination" goes -- assumes that the damage of such discrimination continues (or doesn't) today. Let's settle that question before trying to decide whether the current remedies actually address the problem properly and appropriately.

Agreed. But so did slavery, to a much greater degree. AA is supposed to be a small injustice that helps overcome the larger one. The question is whether it is doing so, and how we'll know when its purpose has been served.

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Man up.

[quote]I'm always consistent.

What universities are interested in is quite tangible - it's skin color. I actually agree with the idea of "intangibles", but you see, the academy has wrecked the use of that because they mischievously take advantage of it's subjective non-quantifiable nature as a means to effect the anti-white discrimination they want to perpetrate. For that reason, I regretfully oppose the use of those criteria until the day when universities commit themselves to non-racially discriminatory admission policies - which is exactly what they should do.

That colleges and trade schools are different was incidental to the analogy, as you very well know. Problem-solving ability would be indicated by his certification, professional experience and knowlege are not relevent to people applying for law school - they don't have it yet, creativity is vague and subjective, work quality and work ethic are demonstrable by objective means (grades and difficult courses) in all students (except the AA ones) making a non-frivolous application to U of M.

But the problem with that was stated above.

You on the other hand, just like other "affirmative action" advocates, just dismiss with the wave of a hand what must be a devastating reversal for people who've worked hard toward a goal for a long time, merited admission, and then are told to hit the bricks for having the wrong skin color.
Lessee - she took it all the way to the supreme court for four years because she was mildly perturbed?

Actually, it's supreme nonsense.

You glibly talk about "redressing historical discrimination", as if you can somehow fly back in history and undo wrongs. You CAN'T - those victims are old or dead. Because A was ripped off by B, you want to punish C and reward D.

It is too bad. I can trace historical poverty in my family back to when my great-grandfather was trying to get laborer jobs in the 1930s, and saw signs in union hiring halls that said "NINA". That means no irish need apply. Why don't you trace back and "undo" all the historical wrong done to everybody? How about discrimination against my italian ancestors? Where would it end? But I know where you and the academy want it to end - just with the client ethnic groups of the democrat party.

When I was a struggling undergraduate, I would have said "bring it on".
But now I realize that neither the interests of society nor the long-term interests of individuals who make it up are served by oppressing people of ability and merit.

I don't agree with this "debt" - go after the creators of the debt, which is not me, and not any young white student applying for a job or university position. You literally want to rob peter to pay paul.

It's NOT a small injustice. It's an injustice of such a degree that a constitutional amendment was passed to prevent it.

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Blade: "more educated and literate people than Justabubba"

Justabubba: "that would include everyone"

http://politicalforum.com/showthread.php?t=27847

If the hood fits wear it.

peace.

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E.Pluribus Unum

People of power have NO good will and people of good will have NO power.

If you think Education is Expensive try Ignorance.

If the Free Black Pass fits, flash it.

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Blade: "more educated and literate people than Justabubba"

Justabubba: "that would include everyone"

http://politicalforum.com/showthread.php?t=27847

While a fine theory, you have to ask yourself why colleges -- public or private -- would randomly choose to discriminate against the white majority that makes up the bulk of their customers and (in the case of public schools) tax base.

Beyond that, it makes little sense to throw out all intangible criteria simply because you object to some of them.

Maybe. Although there's a big difference between being able to pass the test and being really skilled. The test represents a minimum standard, after all. And you have no way of knowing whether the plumber has kept up with newer technologies or methods.

A dodge. They don't have a law education yet, or experience as lawyers. But they have plenty of life experience and knowledge. Law schools are not admitting blank slates.

Sure it is. It's also real.

That only measures academic work quality, it doesn't necessarily measure work ethic, and it doesn't take into account the context in which a given individual achieved their grades or chose their courses. Take two equally talented students; make one work 40 hours a week to pay for school and food, while giving the other one a full-ride scholarship that covers room and board as well as tuition. Make the former also help care for his younger siblings, while the latter comes from a stable home. Who will get better grades? Do those grades tell the whole story? Why, then, should the grades be the only criteria used?

One point that you seem to be missing. This isn't a matter of unqualified people being admitted. It's a matter of choosing among qualified applicants. Do you think all the people turned away by Harvard are unqualified to be there? Hardly. The fact is, far more people apply for slots at Harvard than could ever possibly get in. So Harvard turns away most of them -- including plenty of qualified applicants.

What you're objecting to is a school, when deciding which qualified applicants to admit, considering race and student-body makeup as factors.

As noted above, every school turns away applicants who merit admission simply because they have a limited number of slots. Are you prepared to weep for all those others who suffered "devastating reversals"?

I agree that, of all the factors a school can weigh, race is one of the more difficult to defend. But I also think a school does its graduates no favors if they educate them in an environment that has no bearing on the real world. An all-white student body doesn't properly prepare its graduates for the world.

For that matter, neither does an all-black student body. Though in the latter case, since blacks are a clear minority, it's nearly impossible for a black student to be oblivious of the larger culture and its viewpoints. So the effect is smaller.

All in all, giving a small bump to minority applicants in order to achieve a desired student-body mix is reasonable. Giving a large bump, so that minorities are overrepresented (and unqualified candidates are admitted at the expense of qualified ones) is unreasonable. Where the line is drawn is a judgement call.

It's similar to other criteria used by schools, such as geographical distribution. Many schools strive to draw students from all over the country, and from both rural and urban areas. The goal is again the same: a diverse student body that will challenge students, or expose them to thoughts and viewpoints they might never have encountered before.

Here's a hypothetical. Let's say the adults in Clan A decided one day to massacre the entire educated and professional class of Clan B and loot their villages, leaving only uneducated laborers and orphans with no money.

Immediately afterwards, motivated by the horrific bloodshed, members of Clan A revolt and overthrow the elders who made that decision.

Do you think Clan A owes anything to the survivors of Clan B?

Because to me, Clan A owes a lot to Clan B -- especially to the orphans, who deserve a decent education and a shot at the life they were traveling towards before Clan A removed all of their intellectual and financial capital.

Given limited resources (teachers, schoolbooks, classrooms), the only way to guarantee that education for the Clan B orphans is to do so at the expense of some of Clan A's own children, either directly or indirectly.

I think it would be the height of cynicism for Clan A to hold up one of those kids and say, "we can't help Clan B because it would be unfair to punish this child."

Now, in theory you could say that Clan A should fully fund the education of everybody and give up something else instead -- something that only harms the adults who committed the massacre in the first place. But the world doesn't work out that neatly. Any restitution paid by Clan A results in Clan A being poorer and budgets being squeezed everywhere -- including education.

Your approach essentially discards the whole idea of group responsibility. But there are times when applying group responsibility is appropriate -- as in racial discrimination, where the major damage was done by a recognizable extant group, even if the major damage was done by individuals now dead.

Let's assume that there are still lingering effects of past racial discrimination. Why should today's whites benefit from that? It doesn't matter if they're still actively discriminating or not; they're benefiting from ill-gotten gains. Attempting to redress that is not punishing C and rewarding D for the actions of A; it's rebalancing a scale that is still out of whack, a scale that unfairly rewards C and punishes D.

Yep, that was wrong.

That would be impractical. In addition, the effects of such white-on-white discrimination rarely lasted beyond a single generation. The discrimination against blacks was far more systemic, widespread and long-lasting.

Irish, for instance, were never prevented from learning to read, or forbidden to hold property, or things like that.

It's an illegitimate argument to say "because we can't address all of it, we shouldn't address any of it." You address the worst cases, with the largest negative ongoing effects.

Where did I say we should oppress people of ability and merit?

Do you agree that, all things being equal, it is more difficult to succeed if one is born into poverty than if one is born into wealth?

If so, would society not benefit from recognizing that and taking it into account when weighing who has "ability" and "merit?"

Further, doesn't society benefit from enabling economic advancement, so that even the poor feel they have a fair shake to get ahead, rather than blaming their problems on a system that favors the wealthy? Never mind the individual contributions from those people who climb out of poverty -- contributions we might never get if we make the barriers to such a climb excessively high.

I'm simply pointing out that standardized test scores are not the sole or even the best measure of "ability" or "merit." And that schools have legitimate interests for adding in other criteria when it comes to choosing between qualified applicants.

That's a dodge, as I noted above. If you are still benefiting from the lingering effects of past discrimination, you can't say "it's not my problem."

So first you have to make the argument that there are no such lingering effects -- or at least, that those effects do not benefit you personally in any way.

Frankly, I think a lot of poor whites can legitimately make that claim. Which is why I suggested that we'd be better off basing many decisions on economics rather than race. But make the arguments in the proper order. And realize that schools may *still* "discriminate" based on race in their desire to build a student body that is more representative of society as a whole than their applicant pool.

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Man up.

[quote]They do it because academics are one of the four pillars of liberalism in this country (along with the media establishment, most of the judiciary, and corporations). In turn, liberalism has as it's most faithful political clients ethnic minorities, most importantly blacks. Another reason is it makes them feel magnanimous to the blacks, and has the wonderful side benefit that it costs them personally nothing - their "magnanimity" is at the expense of white students and the taxes of their parents.

I've already explained to you that those would be of value if the universities didn't use them, coupled with their highly secretive admissions committee actions, to discriminate against white students for being white.

Yeah yeah, this is the ol' "qualified" argument for anti-white discrimination - universities prior to "affirmative action" always took the MOST qualified candidates - rejecting a MORE qualified candidate in favor of a "qualified' candidate is unjust.