recent affirmative action news

[cyphen]

I'm kinda suprised that this hasn't been tackled yet on here... huh.

Anyway, if you haven't heard, there has been an ongoing complaint against the University of Michigan admissions policies - basically here's the gist-

The claim is that the university's policies amount to a quota system, favoring less qualified minorities over more qualified applicants - which is in essence, in fact, and in deed racial discrimination.

This is going to the Supreme Court. President Bush and his administration have filed a brief with the Supreme Court supporting the claim that this is discrimintion and is wrong and unconstitutional.

I personally agree entirely. There are those who have said this is a big step backwards for affirmative action - i claim it is a big step forward for equality.

The actions of Rosa Parks, the speeches of Dr. Martin Luthor King aim toward a goal that supports the phrase in the Declaration of Independence. "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal."

The University of Michigan has a point system. To be accepted you must score at least 100 of 150 points. Certain minorities are awarded 20 points simply for the color of their skin. In contrast, a perfect SAT score is worth 12 points. In many cases, a less qualified student is allowed admission, and a more qualified student is turned away. Is this equality? I'm curious to hear some opinions on the subject.

A quote from the President's Speech:

"At the law school, some minority students are admitted to meet percentage targets while other applicants with higher grades and better scores are passed over. This means that students are being selected or rejected based primarily on the color of their skin. The motivation for such an admissions policy may be very good, but its result is discrimination and that discrimination is wrong.

Some states are using innovative ways to diversify their student bodies. Recent history has proven that diversity can be achieved without using quotas. "

Here is a link to the President's Speech

[ClubMed]

Laws to protect minorities should only be in effect while there is bias towards minorities, when the population matures these laws will have the opposite effect of harming the minorities they were made to protect.

[Theophylact]

Unfortunately, the Texas method of "diversity enhancement" -- admitting the top 10% of students from a given high school -- depends on having segregated high schools to draw upon! It's basically a shuck.

[ClubMed]

What's a 'shuck'?

[Theophylact]

Oh, and the white students who appealed their rejection wouldn't have been accepted if there had been no bonus for having a black skin; their grades and SATs were too low for them to be admitted without some "affirmative action". (Like George Bush's being accepted at Yale, despite mediocre grades at Andover, because he was the son of an alumnus?)

[Theophylact]

What's a 'shuck'?

A fraud, fake, scam.

[ClubMed]

Thanks

cyphen ---good arguments. But remember the Affirmative action is really undoing the decades of discrimination against minorities.

I know personally of Irish companies in NYC that will not hire minorities except for menial/clerical/hourly jobs. If you happen to be Irish and have low level of skills/intelligence/experience, you get hired just because of you origins.

So what's wrong is giving 20 points on skin color?

See, there is discrimination everywhere. People, by nature, favor their own kind. It's part of humanity.

Unfortunate.

But true.

[J-Excel]

IMO affirmative action is bad for minorities, and bad for the country. It's saying minorities don't have to try as hard. It's keeping them down. It's bad for our country because we are putting less qualified people in professional positions than we would if there were unbiased competition.

I am 100% for equal opportunity. No one should put their race on entrance exams or applications. If you're black, white, asian, hispanic, arabic, whatever, and you want to go to college, simple, do well in high school and be prepared for the entrance exams. And the best students get in.

[Mr. Goodbytes]

Affirmative action must go, it is no longer necessary and is more harmful to minorities than it is to the whites who are displaced because of it. What affirmative action does is strip black americans of one of the most important tenets of our free society: the desire to pursue excellence. There's no need to reach for the top if you only have to get just past halfway there to achieve the same results. Another insult that it lays on is that affirmative action would suggest that we don't feel that blacks are able to succeed at all unless perfect conditions exist. How's that for mud in your eye? It basically says we don't think you can overcome obstacles, obstacles that Italians, Asians, Jews, and the Irish have overcome over time as well. And what about the black students who more than earn their way into top schools because of the earnest effort they've put forth? They're haunted with the knowledge that other students think they got in just because they're black.

Affirmative action was completely justified when it was put into place. It was really the only way to give blacks the necessary leg-up to get into good colleges and have better jobs. For years it did what it was intended to, which also gave the affected blacks the ability to teach their children about success if they so desired to. Racism was so abundant and excessive back in the 60's and of course before, but today it well on its way to being all but extinct. It does not rage on as we are led to believe. There are still individual bigots out there, always will be, but society as a whole finds racism to be incredibly vile. One of the reasons for affirmative action's implementation was that it was clearly felt that with the abundant racism, blacks were very much hampered from succeeding, which was true at the time. At the time, 90 percent of blacks lived in poverty; now the figure is under 25%. Improvement needs to be made still, we're not on the mountaintop yet, but we're well within reach.

Strictly speaking of academics, black test scores have reached a plateau since the early 90's after decades of steadily closing the gap with scores from white students. This must lead one to believe that something other than racism is playing a role here. It's a threefold problem, and will take some time to discuss, but I think i can hack it. Or I can just make a book recommendation: Losing the Race by John McWhorter. Buy it. Read it, twice. I still reference it, did so yestereday in fact.

Anyway, the best option for blacks today is to get rid of affirmative action. The incentive to strive for the best must be there for the desire to do so to develop. We should focus more on helping black students and families, and also those (any group) from the lower-income class and inner cities to become more involved in school and to work with them to help better prepare them for college.