Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Outraged, I tell you. Absolutely outraged at the notion of a brown woman being given a boost up in education and then turning that opportunity into enormous success both at the university and beyond. Of all the insipid attacks on Judge Sotomayor by conservatives, this one may be the most egregiously idiotic and hypocritical. Listen to Pat Buchanan absolutely foam at the mouth over the fact that Sotomayor got into Princeton because of affirmative action:
Having lost the Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008, Republicans are looking to redefine themselves for a nation that still leans conservative but is less Republican that it has been in decades.The nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court presents just such an opportunity. For, even if the party loses the battle and Sotomayor sits on the court, it can win the war, as Ronald Reagan won the Panama Canal debate, even as Senate Republicans committed collective suicide by voting to give away the canal.
What are the grounds for rejecting Sonia Sotomayor?
No one has brought forth the slightest evidence she has the intellectual candlepower to sit on the Roberts court. By her own admission, Sotomayor is an "affirmative action baby."...
In video clips dating back 25 years, and now provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sotomayor, according to the Times, even calls herself an "affirmative action product."
"The clips include lengthy remarks about her experiences as an 'affirmative action baby,' whose lower test scores were overlooked by admissions committees at Princeton University and Yale Law School because, she said, she is Hispanic and had grown up in poor circumstance."
"If we had gone through the traditional numbers route of those institutions," says Sotomayor, "it would have been highly questionable if I would have been accepted. ... My test scores were not comparable to that of my classmates."
Thus, Sotomayor got into Princeton, got her No. 1 ranking, was whisked into Yale Law School and made editor of the Yale Law Review - all because she was a Hispanic woman. And those two Ivy League institutions cheated more deserving students of what they had worked a lifetime to achieve, for reasons of race, gender or ethnicity.
This is bigotry pure and simple. To salve their consciences for past societal sins, the Ivy League is deep into discrimination again, this time with white males as victims rather than as beneficiaries.
Another irony meter bites the dust. Funny, I don't recall ever hearing Pat Buchanan attacking George W. Bush for his legacy admission to Yale. Despite having every conceivable privilege in life and going to the finest private schools, Bush was, by his own admission, a mediocre student. Yet because Yale, like all elite private schools, sets aside seats for the children of their alumni - especially wealthy and powerful alumni - Bush got an admission to that esteemed university.
Yet we have never heard Buchanan complain that Yale has "cheated more deserving students of what they had worked a lifetime to achieve for reasons of white male privilege" by accepting Bush and shutting out another qualified student. Pssst....Pat....it might even have been another white male.
But that's just the beginning of it. While the notion of a (presumably liberal) brown woman getting into Yale on an affirmative action program sends Pat into fits of apoplexy, the fact of a conservative black man getting into Yale on such a program 5 years earlier seems to have totally escaped his notice. That man would be her future colleague, Clarence Thomas.
Has anyone else ever heard Buchanan complaining about how Yale is "deep into discrimination again, this time with white males as victims" for admitting Clarence Thomas? Or calling him a "lightweight" and an "affirmative action baby"? Yeah, I didn't think so.
By the way, if anything, both Thomas and Sotomayor are pretty compelling arguments in favor of affirmative action. One of the premises behind affirmative action in college admissions is that if you take a bright kid from the wrong side of the tracks over a mediocre student raised in privilege, that bright kid is likely to work harder and achieve more and reach their potential over a student whose had everything handed to him and still only managed mediocrity.
Sotomayor may have gotten into Princeton on an affirmative action program, but that didn't help ace her classes there and end up #2 in her class. Sotomayor and Thomas may both have gotten into Yale with a leg up from affirmative action, but that did not earn them top grades in one of the most competitive environments in all of academia. They earned it. And either one of them clearly deserved to be there long before a legacy admission like Bush.
Politics
Comments
I and others have been having a running argument with an asshole calling himself Blurtman over at Matthew Yglesias' blog on this issue. I will link to the thread below but I have another take on this. The University of Virginia at Charlottesville has a quota for students admitted from Northern Virginia which results in higher SAT scoring students from there being denied admission in favor of lower scoring students from Southeastern Virginia. I wonder whether asshole Buchanan thinks that's fair.
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/06/media-at-its-worst.php#comments
Posted by: SLC | June 15, 2009 9:41 AM
I'm totally against race-based affirmative action for many reasons, not the least of which is 1) it translates into quotas and lower standards for Non-Asian Minorities (NAMs), 2) It discriminates against high achieving Asians and whites, 3) It overwhelmingly privileges middle-class and upper-middle-class NAMs over NAMs like Sotomayor who really do come from economically and socially underprivileged backgrounds.
That being said, I firmly agree with Ed that Buchanan is being ridiculous.
Sotomayor probably did get an affirmative action boost into Princeton, but she graduated summa cum laude, fergodssake. And unlike most aff-action NAM beneficiaries, she really did come from a poor background.
And, if you read the book The Price of Admission, it becomes clear that there is an affirmative action policy in place at just about every school, especially the Ivy League schools for plenty of non-NAMs. These disproportionately benefit whitse: family legacies, family wealth, celebrity status, political connections, and athletic ability.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 9:55 AM
BTW what's the racial breakdown (relative to the general population) of Yale (& other 'Ivy League' schools)? - Curiously DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | June 15, 2009 10:11 AM
Poppycock and balderdash! Yes, affirmative action may have opened the door, but her own hard work earned her the top marks to STAY there and to move forward from there. AA opens doors for people who cannot open the doors on their own, but once in the door and put on a level playing field, the beneficiaries still have to perform. She did, and she will.
Posted by: raytheist | June 15, 2009 10:12 AM
Adrienne stated:
Do you have evidence for that assertion?
I assume that quantitative methods for normalizing prospective student's capabilities for doing well at a place like Princeton were highly defective when Sotomayor was applying for entry and recognized as such. I also assume she had an interview with a highly functional administrator(s) of the school during her evaluation period. A competent professional should be able to easily assess whether someone had the chops to excel there given she ended up #2 in her class. I state this as someone who recruited and hired hundreds of undergrad and grad school students and had little trouble picking out the bright ones from their less capable peers prior to perusing their C.V.s.
Therefore, it's my assumption until presented with compelling evidence otherwise that Sotomayor was far from an affirmative action pick, just one where the quantitative approach may not have accurately normalized the potential she subsequently proved she had given her #2 ranking coming out of Princeton. I don't consider a professional bumping her up for entry if she yielded less than stellar quantitative results an AA pick if the promise was evident during her interview(s).
Posted by: Michael Heath | June 15, 2009 10:54 AM
Raytheist posted (#4):
"AA opens doors for people who cannot open the doors on their own, but once in the door and put on a level playing field, the beneficiaries still have to perform. She did, and she will."
I didn't know Judge Sonia Sotomayor had a drinking problem ... oh wait ... my bad :D
(OK, OK, I'll let the grownups talk now)
Posted by: DingoJack | June 15, 2009 11:12 AM
Do you have evidence for that assertion?
Yes, her own admission that her test scores were not on par with that of other applicants.
I assume that quantitative methods for normalizing prospective student's capabilities for doing well at a place like Princeton were highly defective when Sotomayor was applying for entry and recognized as such.
Really? And what is your basis for this assumption?
The fact is, the typical NAM admitted to Ivy League schools has test scores below those of non-NAMs. Whites an Asians with comparable scores are not admitted. This has been documented since the 1980s. And NAMs, on average, do less well academically in comparison to their non-NAM classmates. Sotomayor is an exception to this trend.
Contrast this with places like Caltech, an institution that does not discriminate on the basis of race AT ALL when considering applicants. In fact, they don't factor in race, wealth, family status, athletic ability, and other non-academic, non-science-based, and non-score-based factors.
The percentage of black students at Caltech is about 2%. But, contrary to the typical black students at Ivy League schools, they do no worse than their peers. In fact, if anything, they overperform based on what their grades and test scores would predict. Golden documents this in his book.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 11:22 AM
Idiotic screeds like Buchanan's only prove that if we want to have an honest debate about "affirmative action," the first thing we have to do is stop using the dangerously-vague phrase "affirmative action," and start describing more explicitly what, exactly, we're talking about; and distinguishing the various policies from each other. The policies that fall under that phrase are very different from each other in their intent, effects, and merits; and some are a LOT more justifiable than others.
Posted by: Raging Bee | June 15, 2009 11:25 AM
Buchanan's comments suggest that Sotomayor got into Yale law school via Affirmative Action. Is that true? It sounds like she did damned well at Princeton, and may not have needed any assistance getting into Yale.
Posted by: James Hanley | June 15, 2009 11:29 AM
AA opens doors for people who cannot open the doors on their own, but once in the door and put on a level playing field...
Well, that's what AA is supposed to do. In practice...not so much.
In practice it typically lowers the bar for middle-class and upper-middle-class non-Asian minorities at the expense of Asians and whites of all socioeconomic classes. This way, the Ivy League school muckety-mucks can smugly pat themselves on the back for "fostering diversity" by admitting quotas of underqualified minorities.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 11:42 AM
James Hanley asked:
Buchanan's comments suggest that Sotomayor got into Yale law school via Affirmative Action. Is that true? It sounds like she did damned well at Princeton, and may not have needed any assistance getting into Yale.
She may have gotten an AA boost, depending on how low her LSATs were. But I have to think that graduating summa from Princeton would have at least put her in the running regardless of her ethnicity. After all, the two biggest components of law school admission are GPA and LSAT score. Grades were way less inflated when she graduated from Princeton, too.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 11:47 AM
In practice it typically lowers the bar for middle-class and upper-middle-class non-Asian minorities at the expense of Asians and whites of all socioeconomic classes.
Care to be a little more specific about which "it" you're referring to? Which policies, exactly, are you talking about?
Posted by: Raging Bee | June 15, 2009 12:12 PM
Buchanan is an idiot. Sonia may have benefited from AA policies at our alma mater (yeah, I went there, too, but two years after Sonia), but getting into Princeton would still not be a piece of cake. Then as now, the Ivies require good test scores, good grades in high school, teacher recommendations, personal essays, and evidence of taking challenging courses and having initiative and perseverence. Princeton wants a diverse student body, so for better or worse one's ethnicity becomes part of the admissions equation (as do legacy issues and sports skills).
I am, by the way, white. And Affirmative Action is right and proper, CalTech's policies notwithstanding.
On the other hand, earning top grades while at Princeton is an achievement based on one's effort and talent, not one's skin color. Profs do not (in my experience) grade non-white, non-Asian students more leniently than white students. Sonia was #2 in a class of roughly 1400 because she's smart and she worked her kiester off.
And as Adrienne notes in #11, Sonia got into law school because (1) she graduated from Princeton #2 in her class and (2) she probably had killer LSAT scores. And, since graduating from law school, she has certainly proved her capability and intelligence as a judge. In my estimation, then, Princeton made the right choice in accepting her.
Did Sonia's acceptance and matriculation displace some deserving white dude? Maybe. We will never know, and the admissions officers who served circa 1972 will never tell. Was that mythical white dude (MWD) forever doomed to a life of abject misery, as Buchanan implies? Hardly. That MWD probably got into another Ivy, or a comparable university, and is doing quite well now, thank you.
Us white guys are about as persecuted a group as, say, Christians in America. Buchanan ought to crawl back under his rock and STFU.
Posted by: wheatdogg | June 15, 2009 12:33 PM
Raging Bee is absolutely correct. Princeton does not, and did not ever AFAIK, have quotas for minorities. They did and do have rough quotas for legacies, which is the opposite of what jerks like Buchanan think of as affirmative action.
I have interviewed a number of students over the years for Princeton admission, and here's the deal. Five to eight times more people apply than can be admitted. Maybe 10% of those applicants don't have what it takes, and that's an easy cut. Maybe 1% are obviously going to get in (started their own successful company, already won a Pulitzer, various other more realistic but no less impressive accomplishments). The rest? Largely a tossup.
The problem is people are so damn multidimensional. You could just take the top 2000 SAT scores from the applicant pool and be done with it. Nobody could accuse you of low down dirty tricks like affirmative action. And you'd end up with a class of people who are good at taking the SAT. Or who spent two years taking it every chance they could get because the highest score counts. Pick any test, or any combination, and you have the same problems.
High school GPA? Instant incentive for HS grade inflation. Class ranking? Please. So by what standard are the "affirmative action" applicants displacing "more qualified" applicants? There have been many kids I interviewed who were not offered admission, who I think were "more qualified" than I was when I was admitted. I wish all of them could get in, but they can't. The choice has to be made somehow, and it is quite reasonable that one of the points to account for is diversity.
A diverse class yields a better product. Frankly, when I was there, Princeton was not diverse enough. Even so I met far more minorities than I did in high school, and that was a good thing. Diversity as a specific goal is a useful and important part of the teaching process at a college.
So we're not talking about quotas here. We're talking about finding a way to choose among a much-too-large pool of qualified applicants, and using diversity as one criterion among many to choose, in the interest of providing a more complete learning experience for everyone at the school.
And BTW, if one of the kids I interviewed graduated Summa Cum Laude and someone denigrated that kid with an "affirmative action admission" label, I'd be throwing punches.
Posted by: Johnny Vector | June 15, 2009 12:35 PM
Care to be a little more specific about which "it" you're referring to? Which policies, exactly, are you talking about?
Race-based affirmative action.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 12:50 PM
Let me add, too, that though I generally oppose affirmative action, I think that even if Sonia Sotomayor *did* benefit from race/ethnicity-based AA here, she at least did come from an underprivileged background.
The race-based AA I strongly oppose is the kind that admits lower-qualified non-Asian minorities from affluent backgrounds simply because they are minorities. This kind of AA screws over not only middle-class whites and Asians but also underprivileged whites and Asians too.
FWIW, I'm also opposed to letting underqualified applicants into good schools based on legacies, atheltic ability, and money too. It's hard to get the exact numbers on how many otherwise underqualified (mostly white) applicants are let in based on these factors, though, because universities aren't exactly forthcoming with this data. Imagine that!
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 12:58 PM
Sorry, that's nowhere near specific enough. Are you talking about quotas? Double-standards? Outreach? Quotas before isolating a pool of qualified applicants, or quotas after?
Posted by: Raging Bee | June 15, 2009 1:00 PM
Did Sonia's acceptance and matriculation displace some deserving white dude? Maybe. We will never know...
Hey, out here in the non-academic world, qualified applicants are displaced all the time, for a wide variety of rational and less-than-rational reasons. That's what happens every time the number of qualified applicants for a job or student position exceed the number of available positions. Welcome to the real world, and quit blaming "affirmative action" -- it's been happening long before the phrase was even invented.
Posted by: Raging Bee | June 15, 2009 1:05 PM
Adrienne - Good for you for sustaining nearly as much outraged as Pat. However your argument is pretty much in dire need of Charles Atlas. Despite direct evidence by Johnny Vector on the complex admission methods (notably absent, I noticed, was consideration of 'race'), you keep plugging away at the outrage on only a feeling that us poor ol' whiteys are being hard done by. Can you please post hard evidence that this is so? - curiously DJ
PS: I haven't got any dog in this race. I'm a foreigner, and very unlikely to admitted to any 'Ivy League' school (unless they've got a AA program for old, lazy & dumb.)
PSS: Johnny Vector, Wheatdogg - What did you study? [And if you're so smart, how come you ain't rich? :)]
Posted by: DingoJack | June 15, 2009 1:10 PM
RB: I'm opposed to policies that admit people who would otherwise not be admitted except for their race/ethnicity. These policies hurt not only the more qualified applicants they end up displacing, but also the underqualified minorities who end up doing poorly at these schools (because they should have not been let in to begin with).
These race-based affirmative action policies disproportionately hurt Asians much more than whites, by the way, especially economically disadvantaged Asians. Harvard itself came to this conclusion as far back as 1988, when it determined that its admission standards for Asians were higher than those for whites (and non-Asian minorities, of course).
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 1:13 PM
Good for you for sustaining nearly as much outraged as Pat.
I am outraged. All forms of AA should be done away with at the college-and grad-school levels, whether it's based on money, legacy, race, or whatever. Caltech is a trailblazer in this effort, good for them. If Ivy League schools did away with AA of all types, they would look a lot more like Caltech does now.
...you keep plugging away at the outrage on only a feeling that us poor ol' whiteys are being hard done by. Can you please post hard evidence that this is so? - curiously DJ.
You must have missed the, oh, three times or so where I referenced Daniel Golden's book, The Price of Admission
Here's a link on amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Price-Admission-Americas-Colleges-Outside/dp/1400097967
And, in case you missed it again, Asians are hit harder than whites by all forms of AA. Basically, poor whites and Asians of all socioeconomic strata except the very very top get hit the hardest. Golden documents that well in his book. The book was based on a series of essays he wrote for the WSJ, by the way. Maybe if you look hard enough, you can find some online.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 1:21 PM
Adrienne - So presumably Harvard lowered the standards for 'Asians' after 1988. Anyone else see the irony here? - DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | June 15, 2009 1:23 PM
Adrienne - So presumably Harvard lowered the standards for 'Asians' after 1988. Anyone else see the irony here? - DJ
No, see, that's the really disgusting and outrageous part. This 1988 internal Harvard report concluded that Asians were indeed being held to a higher standard than everyone else, but defended this on the basis of that lovely utopian concept of "diversity".
If all forms of college and grad-school AA were done away with, Asians would by far end up account for the largest percentage of the population all of these prestigious schools. But, alas, they are sacrificed on the altar of "diversity".
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 1:27 PM
Adrienne - Guess you won't be getting into the 'Ivy League' either*. Insufficient maths skills. Three references, one reference, well it is a integer under five. :) -DJ
*see the postscript to comment #19.
Posted by: DingoJack | June 15, 2009 1:32 PM
Sorry, that last bit should have been, "...for the largest percentage of the population AT all of these prestigious schools."
The UC system considered Asians to be minorities until (IIRC) 1984, when 1/4 of the incoming class at Berkeley was Asian. Then they magically became non-minorities. Later on, when the UC system was supposed to be race-blind by law, they tried giving a boost to socioeconomically disadvantaged California students, hoping that would keep the number of NAMs high enough...but instead, that policy benefitted many more poor whites and Asians rather than blacks and Hispanics. Oops. So then "diversity of life experience" became a way to get around that pesky little problem. Golden documents all of this in his book.
Some minorities are more equal than others in the college admissions game.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 1:33 PM
Adrienne:
The boom you reference, according to the Amazon blurb, shows that legacy admission, not affirmative action, disadvantages poor whites and Asian-Americans; money quote:
"Moreover, the "preference of privilege" enables wealthy candidates to nose out more deserving working- and middle-class students, especially new immigrants and Asian-Americans."
Posted by: Robin Levett | June 15, 2009 1:34 PM
@Me (#26):
"boom" = "book".
Posted by: Robin Levett | June 15, 2009 1:36 PM
Guess you won't be getting into the 'Ivy League' either*. Insufficient maths skills. Three references, one reference, well it is a integer under five. :)
Actually, I just went back and counted. It was actually two references, not three, and not one.
So I guess neither one of us is good at "maths".
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 1:38 PM
Adrienne:
Another quote from the blurb:
"In his provocative and stimulating book, The Price of Admission, Golden makes a powerful case that the number of well-to-do whites given preference to highly selective colleges dwarfs that of minorities benefiting from affirmative action."
Posted by: Robin Levett | June 15, 2009 1:39 PM
"All forms of AA should be done away with at the college-and grad-school levels, whether it's based on money, legacy, race, or whatever."
I agree that legacy admissions are a problem. Legacy admissions are basically AA for white people from wealthy families. In the Ivy League, they were used in the early 20th century to give cover for discriminating against Jews and Catholics.
Bush, the legacy admission, was a poor student once he got into Yale. Sotomayor, despite having benefited from AA, was a much better student at Princeton (She was one of the first female and minority students IIRC.)
I also think that race-based affirmative action should be phased out in the next couple decades.
Posted by: patrikios | June 15, 2009 1:44 PM
Robin:
You have to read the whole book. It talks about all of these forms of unfair admission: race, legacy, wealth, athletic ability, and being the child of a professor.
And he points out, correctly, that while the Right gets its dander up about race-based affirmative action, it says nothing about the inherent unfairness of the other forms. Buckley went so far as to defend legacy admission preferences at Yale in National Review.
It's a really good book, but also quite sad. He profiles many hard-working and underprivileged Asian students who really got shafted in the college admissions game. He calls them the "new Jews".
And if you're so smart, how come you ain't rich?
This question really irks me. The world doesn't always reward "smart" with wealth. Frequently it rewards the dumb and the annoying, though. I mean, is Paris Hilton smart? Michael Jackson? Joan Rivers? Jessica Simpson? Yet these people are all worth millions. The last one is rich and famous in no small part due to the endearing stupidity she displayed on her reality show.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 1:44 PM
These race-based affirmative action policies...
We keep on asking you to describe such policies in some semblance of detail; and we keep on pointing out that there are DIFFERENT KINDS of "affirmative action" policies; and you keep on refusing to answer. This leads me to conclude, until more evidence is provided, that you have no idea what you're talking about.
All you're doing is asserting, over and over, that "race-based affirmative action policies" are harming NAMs, but you never describe what those policies are. If such details are in the book you cite, and if you've actually read the book, then you should at least be able to give us a quick sum-up of what the book says in answer to our questions. Instead, all we get is the same generalization, repeated over and over as if we're all supposed to respond without question to the right code-words.
Posted by: Raging Bee | June 15, 2009 1:47 PM
Adrienne:
And another:
"After spending most of the book roundly criticizing the admissions practices of many of the nation's most prestigious colleges, Golden turns to what he considers a model institution: The California Institute of Technology. Unlike other leading colleges, Caltech does not allow the prerogatives of privilege -- whether wealth, fame or legacy status -- to affect who gets in. In stark contrast to other top institutions, Caltech believes that it is possible to raise the funds necessary to maintain a great university without using admission as a bribe, and its own distinguished history supports that belief.
But the Caltech admissions policy, though exemplary in its integrity, is not without problems. In no small part because of its narrowly conventional definition of merit (primarily scores on standardized tests, grades and rank in class), it has been notoriously unsuccessful in enrolling African Americans; in 2004, just one out of 207 Caltech freshmen was black (for purposes of comparison, the black proportions of the undergraduate student body at MIT, Stanford and Harvard -- all of which use a more flexible definition of merit -- were 6, 10 and 8 percent, respectively)."
So Caltech has the problem that it discriminates against African-Americans because of the particular set of subjective criteria it uses.
Posted by: Robin Levett | June 15, 2009 1:47 PM
Robin:
I'm not saying that the non-race-based AA isn't as bad. It's frequently worse. Basically, if you are wealthy enough and have some sort of legacy, you can buy your way into Harvard. That has been true for decades now.
If you're wealthy enough and even if you have no legacy connection to speak of, you can buy your way into Brown or Duke.
I'm sure this is true for other schools as well. But Golden actually has documented cases of these things happening at Harvard, Duke, and Brown. I had read about the infamous Harvard "Z list" of severely underqualified but wealthy admits in one of Elizabeth Wurtzel's books too.
BUT...just because these other forms of admits are unfair too does not make race-based AA any fairer. Also, that blurb you cited may overstate the case about legacy admits dwarfing the race-based admits. It's extremely difficult to determine whether the wealthy legacy admits dwarf the other AA admits or by how much they do so, just because the universities generally don't want to release or publicize this data.
Realize that legacy admits are also really wealth admits, because Golden found (IIRC) that being a poor legacy really didn't help you in terms of admissions boost.
Athletic affirmative action probably accounts for more underqualified admits compared to the other AA categories. Golden's book focuses on athletic admits for sports that are disproportionately played by the wealthy, though, such as crew, polo, and skiing.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 1:56 PM
You have to read the whole book.
If you're read the book yourself, and you actually understand it, then you should be able, and willing, to give us at least a quick-and-dirty sum-up of what you, and presumably the author, mean by "affirmative action." Your lazy brush-off, quoted above, really makes me thing you're bluffing.
Posted by: Raging Bee | June 15, 2009 2:06 PM
Okay, so Adrienne's coming from where I was a few years ago: In theory, race-based affirmative action is unfair and corrupt. I might say that it has "poor ideological integrity." In a perfect system, it is technically unfair.
I still think this is true. But I now accept that in the real world, affirmative action is necessary, good, and even fair (relatively speaking, of course).
If you really, truly believe that you are going to purge the world of unfair privileges afforded to the wealthy and the well-connected, if you really believe that we are in on the verge of a world without nepotism... I just don't know what to tell you. That world may never exist, and if someday we do achieve that, it will be centuries, if not millenia, from now.
In real-life, in 2009, if you compare how our country would be without affirmative action vs. how our country is with affirmative action, it is pretty clear which is more "fair". Ideology has to take a firm back seat to practicality in this case.
It took me well over a decade to accept this, so I don't really blame people who don't "get it" yet.
Posted by: James Sweet | June 15, 2009 2:06 PM
RB: I have explained already. I'm talking about the actual admission of applicants.
All you're doing is asserting, over and over, that "race-based affirmative action policies" are harming NAMs, but you never describe what those policies are.
I've already stated what the problem is: they get in, they are underqualified, they perform poorly compared to qualified admits. And really, I don't care if you think I'm underinformed or whatever. By all means, read Daniel Golden's book if you don't believe me.
Robin Levitt wrote:
So Caltech has the problem that it discriminates against African-Americans because of the particular set of subjective criteria it uses.
Yes, but what that blurb fails to mention is that Caltech's black students do just as well as, or better than, their non-black peers. This is in contrast to blacks and other NAMs at elite schools.
And actually, what on earth is wrong with using grades, test scores, and merit as the basis for college admissions criteria? Those factors considered together give you the closest approximation possible of the objective merit of a college applicant, don't you think?
Berea College's minority students also do just as well as its non-minority students. All of the students at Berea are severely underprivileged and come from bad socioeconomic circumstances, but that's the only "admissions preference" applicants are given: being poor.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 2:07 PM
In theory, race-based affirmative action is unfair and corrupt.
Actually, I don't believe that. Or rather, I support affirmative action in the sense of searching out (RB's "outreach"), encouraging students from minority or other disadvantaged backgrounds to apply, and then admitting those minority/disadvantaged applicants who are as qualified as non-minority/disadvantaged students. That sort of AA, which seems to be the type of AA that Sotomayor got, I actually agree with.
And I agree with the "outreach" (as RB put it) type of AA, which seeks out disadvantaged but qualified applicants who would otherwise not even consider applying to these schools.
What AA usually means, though, is lowering the bar to get more NAM students admitted, even though they come from middle-class or upper-middle-class backgrounds. That is, non-disadvantaged backgrounds. That's the type of race-based AA I'd love to see disappear (along with legacy AA, wealth AA, celebrity AA, and maybe even sports AA).
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 2:16 PM
I've already stated what the problem is: they get in, they are underqualified, they perform poorly compared to qualified admits.
You haven't explained shit. I asked you to outline specific policies that result in "them" getting in; and you keep on dodging the question.
And actually, what on earth is wrong with using grades, test scores, and merit as the basis for college admissions criteria?
AS HAS ALREADY BEEN EXPLAINED HERE (see Johnny Vector's post #14 in particular), those factors are indeed used; however, a) those criteria yield a surplus of qualified applicants, who must then be narrowed by other factors, which are not always quantifiable; and b) colleges have other priorities in their educational missions, in addition to just getting the best students.
Posted by: Raging Bee | June 15, 2009 2:17 PM
If you really, truly believe that you are going to purge the world of unfair privileges afforded to the wealthy and the well-connected, if you really believe that we are in on the verge of a world without nepotism... I just don't know what to tell you.
Well, in the college admissions arena at least, Caltech did it. Berea did it. Cooper Union did it. So it is possible.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 2:18 PM
You haven't explained shit. I asked you to outline specific policies that result in "them" getting in; and you keep on dodging the question.
Specific policies? Admitting middle-class or upper-middle-class minority students who wouldn't make the cut if they weren't NAMs. Lowering the bar. Quotas.
Policies I do agree with: outreach, soliciting applications from disadvantaged kids (minorities and non-minorities).
AS HAS ALREADY BEEN EXPLAINED HERE (see Johnny Vector's post #14 in particular), those factors are indeed used; however, a) those criteria yield a surplus of qualified applicants, who must then be narrowed by other factors, which are not always quantifiable; and b) colleges have other priorities in their educational missions, in addition to just getting the best students.
First of all, race-based AA means admitting NAMs, who, if they were white, would have never made the admissions cut if they were white/Asian. This creates resentment among those who got shafted. It also privileges people based on something they did not earn: their race/ethicity.
Johnny Vector in #14 just gave a nice paean to "diversity" and how much it benefitted his experience. Talk about a fuzzy concept! What makes a bunch of low-scoring NAM students from upper-middle-class backgrounds more "diverse" than high-scoring Asian students or white students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds? Nothing.
Sorry, I don't buy the diversity argument. I didn't when I was applying to colleges 20 years ago, and I don't now.
Also, race-based AA doesn't help those NAMs who end up in intellectual environments where they are over their heads. Because they are intellectually outgunned, they tend to do poorly and feel marginalized and resentful as a result.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 2:29 PM
@Adrienne in #38: I was referring to the kit-and-caboodle affirmative action, which includes "lowering the bar" (although that is not the phraseology I would choose). So what I said should be read in that context.
I agree the "outreach"-style affirmative action you refer to should be uncontroversial.
Posted by: James Sweet | June 15, 2009 2:33 PM
Adrienne,
There are a number of problems with your argument. First, Affirmative Action ≠ quotas, but still most of the people who argue your side of the issue use the two terms as synonyms. Second, this statement:
Some minorities are more equal than others in the college admissions game.
Yes, some minorities currently face greater discrimination and lack of opportunity than others, so some minorities do have some advantages when it comes to college admissions. Asian Americans, as a group, are half as likely to live in poverty as Hispanic, African, or Native Americans. Those same minority groups, on average, faced greater discrimination in the past, systematic social and political discrimination that barred them from economic and educational opportunities and forced them into segregated educational systems that continue to provide fewer opportunities.
Add to that, Asian Americans are not a homogeneous group. Chinese and Japanese Americans tend to have higher income levels and lower poverty rates whereas Hmong and a number of Pacific Islander groups have much higher poverty rates. I noticed you mentioned variations in African American demographics, but somehow managed to miss this rather glaring divide in Asian American demographics?
I'll point out a few demographics of the African American population. According to the 2004 Census update brief, 24.7% of African Americans lived below the poverty line. That means, of the 36.6 million African Americans, more than 9 million lived in poverty. Median household income for African Americans was only 61.7% that of white households. More than 60% of African Americans attend majority-minority schools, nearly 60% live in major urban areas. Those majority-minority schools, on average had lower per student funding (roughly $900), higher dropout rates, lower 4 year graduation rates
So, if a kid comes out of a school like that, and is in the running to attend an ivy league school, yes, I'm willing to give them a few Affirmative Action points to give them an opportunity. Hell, if a kid comes out of a school like that and even qualifies to attend a university, I'm willing to give them those Affirmative Action points.
Posted by: dogmeatIB | June 15, 2009 2:52 PM
Sorry, I don't buy the diversity argument.
Vector's comment was about much more than a "diversity argument." It was an important glimpse of how college-admission decisions are, and should be, made, and the complex consquences of those decisions. And your lazy brush-off does not speak well for your credibility.
Posted by: Raging Bee | June 15, 2009 2:55 PM
Enough arguing amongst ourselves!
Let's all just concentrate on comparing Sotomayor & Obama to Hitler. After all, Buchanan likes him & is always willing to make excuses for him.
Posted by: Rob Jase | June 15, 2009 3:13 PM
RB, I'm well aware of what Johnny Vector claimed. But despite Vector's brush off of the relative unimportance of grades, class rank, and SATs, they do have good predictive power of success in college when considered in the aggregate (although not when considered individually). So Vector is wrong when he poo-poos them. NAM test scores and grades predict that NAMs will do worse in environments with large amounts of higher scoring Asians and whites.
And guess what? They do. Underqualified NAMs (and non-NAMs such as the Harvard Z-listers and purely athletic admits) do indeed perform poorly compared to those admitted with higher grades and test scores. Well, guess you need some badly scoring students to bring down the class curves, right?
And quite frankly, I don't care if you think I'm being lazy or giving a brush-off, because anyone with a whiff of objectivity who reads my comments would see that's just not true.
I also notice that you and others on here are letting Vector's lazy and touchy-feely comments like "A diverse class yields a better product" slide. Vector's highest praise of AA seems to be that it let him meet more minorities in college than he otherwise would have met on his own.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 3:20 PM
Rob hints at a good point: compared to Buchanan's opinions about Hitler and WWII, his opinions about Sotomayor are so benign they're not worth mentioning.
Seriously, this is the guy who said we should have encouraged the Third Reich and the USSR to annihilate each other. Of course that would have meant tens of millions more dead and a whole continent -- and civilization -- in ruins, but hey, who needs Old Europe anyway?
So why should a discussion of AA start with this old bigot's ravings?
Posted by: Raging Bee | June 15, 2009 3:24 PM
So Vector is wrong when he poo-poos them.
He didn't poo-poo anything, and you'd know this if you actually read his post. Trust me on this -- I just reread it for the third time. If you're going to pretend to understand what someone said while blatantly misrepresenting it, then there's no point in arguing with you -- you have no credibility.
Posted by: Raging Bee | June 15, 2009 3:30 PM
Adrienne:
Actually, most Affirmative Action programs overwhelming benefit white women more than racial minorities. So there's a good chance you yourself have, or will be at some point in the future, the beneficiary of Affirmative Action.
Posted by: Finch | June 15, 2009 3:32 PM
Re Adrienne
What is Ms. Adriennes' view of the geographic discriminatory admissions policy of the Un. of Virginia, Charlottesville which I mentioned in # 1?
Posted by: SLC | June 15, 2009 3:35 PM
And guess what? They do. Underqualified NAMs (and non-NAMs such as the Harvard Z-listers and purely athletic admits) do indeed perform poorly compared to those admitted with higher grades and test scores. Well, guess you need some badly scoring students to bring down the class curves, right?
The problem with your argument is that you state they do not perform as well, but it doesn't answer whether or not the people that would have been admitted instead would have done significantly better. I have to assume, unless the stats are totally bogus, that they are being compared to the other applicants who are attending at the same time. That means they are being compared not to those they supplanted, but those who were not in danger of being supplanted. What evidence is there that those students who were on the cusp do significantly better than those who obtain admission via affirmative action? Sotamayor presents anecdotal evidence that at least some do significantly better than the non-minority students who are being so passionately defended by Adrienne.
Comparing AA students to their peers in performance is a bit deceiving, while they are in competition with their peers in the classes, what evidence is there that the students who did not get in because the AA students got in would have done significantly, if any better?
Affirmative Action, if implemented properly, recognizes that a prospective student came from a disadvantaged background yet still succeeded enough to qualify for admission. They are qualified to enter the institution, just possibly not as qualified as a peer who had greater advantages, or equally qualified and then get the nod because of their disadvantaged background.
An example would be two students, one with 1500 points from SAT/ACT, grades, admission essay (which is subjective in the first place), etc. The second student has 1475 points from the same scoring criteria, but gains a 50 point "disadvantaged background" credit giving them 1525. The two students are both qualified to enter, the one is marginally more qualified but came from a more middle-class background, the minority student, while still qualified, overcame a disadvantaged background to qualify. Why shouldn't this be recognized? Who is to say that student "A," whose admission packet is less than 2% objectively and subjectively better will perform better as a student?
How have affirmative action students been compared to the students who did not make the cut because they were admitted instead? I seriously doubt that this has been given significant study. Instead the data I've seen has compared them to their peers who did make the cut. Of course a student from a disadvantaged background is more likely to struggle, but so is the non-disadvantaged student who barely makes the cut (rhymes with tush). In every class there is going to be a 1st and a last graduate. If that last person happens to be a disadvantaged student who was admitted because of affirmative action, good, because statistically they replaced a mediocre non-disadvantaged student who would have graduated last in their place.
Posted by: dogmeatIB | June 15, 2009 3:49 PM
an addition to my comment at 49:
I should say that if Adrienne is a white girl like me, she may be the be the beneficiary of Affirmative Action, because these programs usually benefit us the most. I shouldn't make assumptions about Adrienne's racial background just because she's complaining about how Affirmative Action keeps the white man down, just like Buchanan shouldn't assume Sotomayor is just a dumb broad who got a free ride because she's Latina.
Posted by: Finch | June 15, 2009 3:55 PM
I should say that if Adrienne is a white girl like me, she may be the be the beneficiary of Affirmative Action
I'm actually Hispanic, but I didn't take the aff-am "hook" in college applications for various reasons, because my father was very anti-AA, believing that Hispanics should succeed on their own merits instead of because of their race. He was also VERY opposed to "Hispanic studies" and other ethnic studies departments and majors. I agree, as those "* Studies" departments -- Womens, African-American, American, etc. -- are usually the easiest and the least rigorous and academic in any university.
I'm also a white Hispanic, by the way, and not mestizo. Nor did I come from a "disadvantaged background".
I should say that if Adrienne is a white girl like me, she may be the be the beneficiary of Affirmative Action, because these programs usually benefit us the most.
Correction: AA in all forms, including legacy/wealth-based and sports-based, benefits wealthy whites and upper-middle-class-to-wealthy white athletes the most. Certainly not lower-class whites.
And I was not a wealthy legacy nor a star athlete, so I wasn't helped by the pro-white forms of AA, no.
Comparing AA students to their peers in performance is a bit deceiving, while they are in competition with their peers in the classes, what evidence is there that the students who did not get in because the AA students got in would have done significantly, if any better?
The combination of superior grades, class rank, and test scores is a good predictor of success in college. So the evidence would be the of superior scores/ranks/grades of those who did not get in compared to those with lower grades/test scores/ranks who did.
An example would be two students, one with 1500 points from SAT/ACT, grades, admission essay (which is subjective in the first place), etc. The second student has 1475 points from the same scoring criteria, but gains a 50 point "disadvantaged background" credit giving them 1525.
The SAT point boost for NAMs on the 1600 scale used to be more like a 200 to 300-point difference rather than a 50-pt difference.
And what is a "disadvantaged background"? I would consider a poor socioeconomic status to be a truly disadvantaged background. Not being an upper-middle-class black or Hispanic.
For a while the UC universities tried using low socioeconomic status as an "affirmative action" boost after blatant race-based preferences were outlawed. But this boost still ended up helping more poor whites and Asians than it did blacks and Hispanics.
See, I'm fine with affirmative action for people from truly poor and disadvantaged backgrounds reagardless of what color they are. I'd be happy to see this form of race-blind AA implemented. But if colleges switched to this form of AA, it would still probably result in fewer blacks and Hispanics being admitted overall than are admitted now.
I like one Swarthmore prof's idea for fair college admissions: use a random lottery to select admitted students from the entire pool of applicants who meet at least the minimum standards of qualification.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 4:22 PM
I shouldn't make assumptions about Adrienne's racial background just because she's complaining about how Affirmative Action keeps the white man down.
Correction: Race-based AA keeps the poor white man (and woman) down. It keeps the Asian man (and woman) down even more.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 4:26 PM
OK, I see where you're coming from now.
Posted by: Finch | June 15, 2009 4:26 PM
Correction to my correction: All forms of AA keep the non-wealthy and non-sporty white and Asian men and women down.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 4:28 PM
And I owe you an apology for making assumptions about your stance on Affirmative Action, Adrienne. It's just that in the past few weeks we've had the Pat Buchanans of the world complaining about middle-class Christian white guys are an oppressed minority in the United States (and that it's just like Jim Crow! -- good lord!), so when I saw someone start to criticize AA I thought "Oh no, not again!" But now that I see your argument, I can see that you do raise a lot of good points.
Posted by: Finch | June 15, 2009 4:39 PM
@Adrienne:
Your source says unequivocally that it is much, much worse. That is unsurprising. Legacy admissions are overwhelmingly of scions of rich, therefore generally white, men. They amount to 25% of all admissions; and they take no account of merit, unlike most affirmative action programmes of which I am aware, which adjust for the fact that poorness and blackness are at least as good predictors of test score as "intelligence".
Golden himself says that the number of white males benefitting from legacy affirmative action (at the expense of eg Asian-Americans) dwarfs the NAM students benefitting from other forms of affirmative action.
There is additional discrimination in favour of the wealthy - they can afford tutors, and the tests are tutorable.
This is the clearest possible indication that Caltech's admissions policies discriminate against black students. The group is under-represented in the school as compared with the general population, and over-achieves by comparison with the other groups. To put it differently - if you are black, to be admitted you have to be better than if you are non-black. You might see that as a virtue; I don't.
No, I don't. Given the evidence that all forms of intelligence tests track with socio-economic status, confirmed by what you report above as to Caltech's outcomes, this is simply untrue. It looks objective, because you can point to numbers and all...but do equal test scores mean that candidate A from the wealthy neighbourhood who has been tutored for the test is actually as good a candidate as candidate B who is from the other side of the tracks, whose school is patrolled by school goons with firearms and tasers and where pupils are regularly arrested for drug-dealing in the playground?
You can add to that that using fine differences in test score as an indication of significant differences in ability between candidates is simply unjustifiable. Fine differences are just as good an indication of who had a cold on the day of the test.
By the way, I see what you did there; slipping in "merit", when that is not how Caltech select.
As Johnny Vector pointed out above, when you get the kind of over-subscription that elite schools draw, you could fill your vacancies several times over with qualified candidates. There is plenty of room in those circumstances to ensure that you look beneath the pseudo-objective veneer of reliance on test scores and actually earn your corn (as an admissions tutor) by actually doing some selection on merit rather than counting names down a list.
In the interests of full disclosure, I am a middle-aged white male whose class in 1977-1980 was more than 50% female, with significant although maybe not representative ethnic minority representation.
Posted by: Robin Levett | June 15, 2009 6:23 PM
Johnny Vector, Wheatdogg - What did you study? [And if you're so smart, how come you ain't rich? :)
If it wasn't for that smiley after that smart-ass remark, I might have gotten a little pissed. Instead, I'm annoyed.
I can't speak for Vector, but I studied both physics and Comparative Lit while at Princeton. My A.B. was in Comp Lit. After uni, I worked as a newspaper reporter (a real growth industry there!), then went to grad school to prepare to be a high school physics teacher. I worked in that lucrative profession for 23 years.
"Princeton in the Nation's Service" is an old slogan of the institution. Some of us graduates took it to heart and entered the service professions, or became (ahem) judges. Others became rich. Good for them. I'm happy doing what I do.
I have a question for Adrienne: how familiar are you with admissions procedures at the Ivies, specifically Princeton?
Posted by: wheatdogg | June 15, 2009 7:09 PM
And to get back to the original thread, Sonia's record of academic achievement began when she was a youngster, unless Buchanan wants to contend that parochial schools in NYC also have affirmative action programs. See her bio at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor
Posted by: wheatdogg | June 15, 2009 7:36 PM
Robin Levett wrote:
Your source says unequivocally that it is much, much worse.
Again, hard to come up with hard data on the wealth admits especially. Legacy admits also, to a point. Notre Dame, for instance, reserves 25% of all seats for legacy admits. Other schools aren't so forthcoming with their numbers, so Mr. Golden had to approximate the numbers.
But even so, if if the white-AA is worse, that still doesn't mean that race-based AA is any more just. Which it isn't. It's like saying that rape and murder are worse than mugging. Of course they are, but that doesn't mean mugging is not a bad thing.
...poorness and blackness are at least as good predictors of test score as "intelligence".
What you are still not getting is that most of the NAMs admitted to elite schools are not poor. Not by a long shot. The overwhelming majority are upper-middle-class and middle-class. So race-based AA doesn't end up helping poor minorities at all. Race-based AA helps the following groups the most: elite school administrators and chancellors and the like (because they can feel smug in having helped downtrodden minorities, even though they really haven't, and because it assuages their elite white guilt) and middle-class and upper-middle-class NAMs.
This is the clearest possible indication that Caltech's admissions policies discriminate against black students. The group is under-represented in the school as compared with the general population, and over-achieves by comparison with the other groups. To put it differently - if you are black, to be admitted you have to be better than if you are non-black. You might see that as a virtue; I don't..
You misread or misunderstood what I said. Caltech certainly does not discriminate against black students. Their black students do not have to be better than others to be admitted. BUT, unlike at other schools, black students have to be AS GOOD as everyone else.
For the time period in which Golden had data to analyze, black students at Caltech do as well OR sometimes even better than the other students. The point Golden was trying to make here is that they don't do worse than other students, which is what typically happens at other elite schools. Blacks and other NAMs tend to pick easier, "softer" classes and majors at these other schools too. But not at Caltech.
So, it's not a case of, "the black students ALWAYS do better than everyone else," which would be the case if Caltech were indeed discriminating against blacks.
Whites tend to pick easier classes and majors too, by the way, when faced with large numbers of Asians in science and math classes. Asians also have the tendency do better in college than their high school grades and test scores would predict. So I guess they must be discriminated against too by college admissions committees, right? Oh, except that we already knew that.
Given the evidence that all forms of intelligence tests track with socio-economic status...
Actually, they don't....poor whites and Asians still outperform middle-class blacks on both intelligence tests and standardized tests like the SAT, for example. But that's a can of worms that I'm not going to get into here.
...but do equal test scores mean that candidate A from the wealthy neighbourhood who has been tutored for the test is actually as good a candidate as candidate B who is from the other side of the tracks, whose school is patrolled by school goons with firearms and tasers and where pupils are regularly arrested for drug-dealing in the playground?
Except your typical NAM at an elite school much more closely resembles candidate A. And if candidate B is white or Asian, he or she still loses out in the college admissions game to a black or Hispanic candidate A.
By the way, I see what you did there; slipping in "merit", when that is not how Caltech select.
Actually, merit is EXACTLY how Caltech selects. Which is why it has the racial composition it does. But at Caltech, unlike at other elite schools, black and Hispanic students aren't always the ones failing and dropping out and picking the easiest majors just to survive.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 8:06 PM
Thanks RB! I figure anytime Buchanan disagrees with me i must be on the right side.
Hey, I've been whacked by AA a few times but it really didn't make any difference in my education or career.
If being bounced once or twice more than twenty years ago because of being a white male is all it takes to destroy your life then you just aren't trying very hard.
Posted by: Rob Jase | June 15, 2009 8:56 PM
Posted by: llewelly | June 15, 2009 9:16 PM
I'm a little confused, Adrienne. I agree with you that if you have two candidates, who have almost equal credentials and come from similar backgrounds, you should not automatically let in the one with the darker skin. But how do you feel about AA based on poverty?
Person A grew up in the Chicago slums. He worked at a McDonalds to help feed his family, had to worry about gang violence, and graduated with a B average. The kid had very little time or opportunity for extracurricular activities.
Person B lived in an upper-middle class family. His parents got him a private tutor, and he went to a high school with well paid teachers and state-of-the-art computers. He was a member of his school newspaper, and he ended up with an A average and decent standardized test scores.
Note that I did not mention race or ethnicity. Which student would you allow into your college?
Posted by: Brandon | June 15, 2009 9:42 PM
Actually, I take back what I said earlier: "So race-based AA doesn't end up helping poor minorities at all."
Race-based AA probably does help some truly socioeconomically disadvantaged NAMs (like Sotomayor), but it preferentially helps non-disadvantaged middle-class NAMs. Often those NAMs who are truly socioeconomically disadvantaged are not prepared well enough for college to survive at elite college/universities (or any colleges/universities) because they require so much remedial schooling.
I do remember, though, that a few years ago Amherst College began an initiative under President Marx to recruit and help truly economically disadvantaged NAMs, made a special effort to support these students, and had good results.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 9:42 PM
PAT BUCHANAN SMASH!
Posted by: Geoff | June 15, 2009 9:59 PM
But how do you feel about AA based on poverty?
I'm for it, but with caveats. The trouble with AA for truly disadvantaged minorities is that they tend to be so disadvantaged that they aren't ready for college and do very poorly once there unless they get a lot of remedial help.
See what I posted earlier about Amherst's initiative, though. And Sotomayor herself obviously did well despite growing up in poverty. But apparently she showed a record of strong academic achievement in her Catholic school from an early age too. It sounds like she had an average above a B when she applied to college.
Person A grew up in the Chicago slums. He worked at a McDonalds to help feed his family, had to worry about gang violence, and graduated with a B average. The kid had very little time or opportunity for extracurricular activities.
Person B lived in an upper-middle class family. His parents got him a private tutor, and he went to a high school with well paid teachers and state-of-the-art computers. He was a member of his school newspaper, and he ended up with an A average and decent standardized test scores.
If Person A had truly dismal test scores and really hadn't had enough academic preparation, it would be a tough call, honestly. If he/she had a B average because of the workload but had solid SAT scores despite lack of tutoring, an was able to write killer essays and showed other evidence of academic competence, that would be a big plus in his/her favor. Or if there were some way to accept Person A such that Person A could complete remedial work in a post-bacc year or community college before coming to school, then that would certainly tilt the decision towards Person A.
There are also economically disadvantaged kids who live in bad neighborhoods and have to work lots of hours despite going to school full time, and yet who still manage to make As and score well on the SATs. Golden's book profiles a couple of Asian students just like this, actually. Kids who got turned down at UCLA and Berkeley in favor of NAMs with the same life stories and lower test scores.
Disadvantaged kids of all races, but especially NAMs, need help before they apply for college. Or else, they will often go to college and flounder, especially in math & science classes. And this goes back to some of what I feel is so wrong and unfair about race-based AA and why it's really more of a way for elite white liberals to assuage their own guilt about past discrimination against minorities rather than truly helping socioeconomically disadvantaged minorities.
Elite colleges/universities should be identifying and intervening in the lives of kids who want to succeed in school as they start high school, or even junior high. Read the Washington Post articles on a kid named Cedric Jennings who grew up in the ghetto and DC and wanted to go to MIT. His dream was squelched when he was told his SAT and other math test scores were too low for MIT...which they were. Even the extra math coursework he did in high school on his own initiative didn't give him the math skills sufficient to survive an engineering major at MIT. He ended up going to Brown and majoring in a non-science. Sociology, I think. If he had started being prepared for MIT in 9th grade, however, maybe the story would have ended differently.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 15, 2009 10:04 PM
Adrienne,
The thing about test scores is that you can be tutored to score higher. If you had been tutored since middle school, you would have seen almost every possible question on those test. One would not have to have any intelligence but a good memory to pass. My sister has a successful business tutoring those brilliant kids.
The students you complain about, I would think would not graduate or be able to stay in school once admitted. You speak as if there is a conspiracy by all the professors to pass the failing students along. You must think no educator has any ethics.
I also reminded of all those white students struggling besides me.
Posted by: Hathor | June 15, 2009 11:17 PM
Brandon,
Did you skip down to the end? I believe Adrienne had stated her approval of AA based on SES at least three times before you asked.
To all those arguing with Adrienne, your questions and critiques are legitimate, but the tone of many of them seems to me to be attacking Adrienne as though she's a bad person for arguing against purely race-based AA. And some of them came after she had at leat twice mentioned that she was against legacy and sports based AA, also.
I know people get real het up about race issues, but Adrienne's a regular here, and she's never given any evidence of being a racist. (Not that any one's claimed that explicitly, but I'm seeing it in the tone of some of her critics.)
Posted by: James Hanley | June 15, 2009 11:32 PM
I remember some years ago, I read and article about objection to supposedly Affirmative Action admission. Seeing a quote by some student about the test score, complaining that the applicants scores were lower. One would have thought the objection was about a several hundred point differential the way the student bashed the applicant; not 20 points. I thought, was 20 out of 1100's statistically significant? This is the kind of problem I have with people who are not in the admission process itself; what kind of criteria do they use? I usually don't trust their proclamations of being fair either.
The tone I have is that when I am dead it may be time to end affirmative action, because during my lifetime I have seen too many qualified people denied. There has yet to be enough people to have gone through, to level the playing field.
Posted by: Hathor | June 16, 2009 12:01 AM
Ed, if you really want to be fair, then you have to admit that affirmative action is absolutely unjust. How can it be said that it is wrong to discriminate based on race, then attempt to rectify past racism with policies that discriminate based on race?? It's just stupid! Ed, you see fairness in Sotomayor getting her "hand up", but I see an injustice in that some guy who worked his butt off to get in to Yale got denied because he didn't have darker skin.
Buchanan nailed it when he said the following:
And those two Ivy League institutions cheated more deserving students of what they had worked a lifetime to achieve, for reasons of race, gender or ethnicity.
This is bigotry pure and simple. To salve their consciences for past societal sins, the Ivy League is deep into discrimination again, this time with white males as victims rather than as beneficiaries.
Yes, those Ivy League schools did likely cheat somebody else out simply because Sotomayor had dark skin. And yes, this IS bigotry. It is unfair to screw some person who worked his/her butt off out of their opportunity to go to Princeton or Yale simply because he/she had the wrong color of skin.
Posted by: mroberts | June 16, 2009 1:16 AM
mroberts:
When you say the same thing about Bush and Clarence Thomas getting into Yale, I'll take your view seriously.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | June 16, 2009 2:09 AM
Shit, doesn't anybody read the comments here? Sonia was top of her class in high school, a rigorous Catholic school in NYC. She did not get into Princeton solely because of her skin color, ethnicity, or shoe size. She had the credentials, although she claims her ethnicity may have helped her get in.
Look, I have forgotten how many people applied each year to Princeton back in the early '70s, when Sonia and I graduated HS, but it was a pretty large number. Nowadays, more than 25,000 applicants vie for a measly 1,400 places in the freshman class. And guess what, mroberts? Surprisingly, not all the white folks get in. Nor do all the black, Asian, Native American, Latino, or what-have-you applicants.
Your and Buchanan's rantings and ravings are a manufactroversy. This is not roller derby; Sonia did not bump some mythical white dude (MWD) from the race by taking the admissions offer. The Ivies send out more acceptance letters each year than there are available places, because believe it or not some applicants actually turn down Princeton, for a variety of reasons. It is an oversimplification to claim admitting a brown person automatically keeps a white person out. College admissions are not a deterministic process by any stretch of the imagination.
And as someone noted up above somewhere, SAT scores are not an infallible predictor of achievement. That's why the highly selective schools look at far, far more than board scores. I have had students with a variety of skin tones and topnotch board scores get turned down by the Ivies, because their other creds were lacking in some way. Were their lives ruined as a result, as Buchanan says? Hardly. They went to other institutions that are just as good, but don't have the panache of an Ivy League school. Stop alleging that affirmative action dooms some white folks to lives of abject misery. It ain't so.
Posted by: wheatdogg | June 16, 2009 2:21 AM
@James #69:
Only time for a short comment (I'll get back to your point by point post later, Adrienne).
The problem for me is that Adrienne has cited only one source for her very many assertions about the iniquity of AA; Golden's book. That book's point appears, from the Amazon blurb to which she directed us, to be directed specifically at legacy admissions and the rest of the apparatus to help rich white folks into Ivy league universities. It barely touches the issue of race-based AA, against which she rails - and then only to point out that legacy (etc) admissions benefit far more rich whites than race-based AA benefits minorities. So she overinterprets a study that only peripherally deals with the issue at hand here.
She lauds Caltech, a school that uses admissions criteria that will inevitably benefit both the rich and the white against the poor and non-white.
I am aware that Adrienne is a regular here. I am surprised at the tone of her comments on this thread.
Posted by: Robin Levett | June 16, 2009 2:56 AM
@James:
Just a couple of lines more before I leave for work: bear in mind that African Americans are hugely underrepresented at Caltech by comparison with the general population, and as a generality those who get there outperform their peers of all races; from Adrienne's post #61:
Posted by: Robin Levett | June 16, 2009 3:32 AM
Robin Levett wrote:
The problem for me is that Adrienne has cited only one source for her very many assertions about the iniquity of AA; Golden's book.
I'm citing it because Golden does the best job of compiling all of this information in one place. But I've felt this way for years, ever since my own college application days. And I'm basing my opinions on plenty of other sources I've read over the years, and they have been many. The Jennings articles also made a profound impression on me.
And really, I've seen the "diversity" scam at ground zero. White Hispanics like me are the biggest winners of all in the college admissions game. We're white and not "brown"...hell, you can be blonde and blue-eyed, with one parent who grew up in Argentina but is of German ethnic stock....and you still count as an "under-represented minority"! You can look like Cameron Diaz, grow up in an upper middle-class household, and still be considered a NAM! White Hispanics make the university administrators all happy because they get counted in as part of the minority group and let the college/university administrators boast about how "diverse" their school is.
That book's point appears, from the Amazon blurb to which she directed us, to be directed specifically at legacy admissions and the rest of the apparatus to help rich white folks into Ivy league universities. It barely touches the issue of race-based AA, against which she rails - and then only to point out that legacy (etc) admissions benefit far more rich whites than race-based AA benefits minorities.
You know, Robin, you could actually try reading the book to see what its points are. Golden does give a good amount of coverage to the race-based AA scam and to the legacy AA scam and the wealth AA scam and the athletic AA scam.
He also lauds places like Berea and Caltech that are race-blind and wealth-blind and basically all-forms-of-AA-blind.
...and then only to point out that legacy (etc) admissions benefit far more rich whites than race-based AA benefits minorities.
I've said at least four times on this thread, starting with my first comment, that I disagree with all forms of AA. It just happens to be that the Sotomayor/Buchanan issue at hand has to deal with race-based AA. But I wholeheartedly oppose all forms of AA and I have pointed out that while the Right gets all upset about race-based AA, they ignore or even defend other forms of AA.
So she overinterprets a study that only peripherally deals with the issue at hand here.
First of all, it's not *one* study, it's much more than that. Secondly, you haven't even read the bleeping book, so you really have no idea what it says.
She lauds Caltech, a school that uses admissions criteria that will inevitably benefit both the rich and the white against the poor and non-white.
Caltech actually doesn't consider wealth at all in admissions criteria (unlike most schools). And even more damaging to your thesis, Caltech has a HUGE Asian population. If anything, there admissions criteria discriminate in favor of Asians precisely because those criteria fail to privilege everyone else (including whites) at the expense of Asians.
Your comments indicate that you haven't read the book or really much other information on the topic, and you are Canadian, I think? So how in the heck would you know anything about the American college admissions process? Everything I've read about Canadian universities states that their admissions policies are far more like those of Caltech than Harvard in that they focus on admitting students almost purely on test scores and grades.
So again, Robin Levett, you and your comments on this topic are clueless.
I am aware that Adrienne is a regular here. I am surprised at the tone of her comments on this thread.
Just like Ed Brayton, I have no allegiance to Right or Left when they cling to stupid myths like the supposed benefits of AA that actually do more harm than good. I'm an independent in that regard.
My father experienced some incidents of discrimination in his college and grad school career because of being Hispanic, yet he never EVER endorsed or approved of race-based AA in the forms of lowering standards for minorities. Oh, and he grew up on the borderline between poor and middle-class, too. Yet did REALLY well in school. He earned his admission to Berkeley fair and square.
I sympathize with minorities like Thomas Sowell (who got into Stuyvesant and the University of Chicago purely on merit) who get reflexively bashed as being "racist" when they oppose race-based AA. In fact, it seems as though anyone who opposes race-based AA, even for well thought out reasons, gets reflexively labeled "racist". Kinda like how some people reflexively label those who question the Iraq war or waterboarding of Abu Ghraib prisoners as "unpatriotic" and "hating America".
Posted by: Adrienne | June 16, 2009 6:51 AM
...and as a generality those who get there outperform their peers of all races; from Adrienne's post #61
That is not what I said, that is not what the book says. I explained this already in a later comment. And if you want to know the reality of the situation, read the damn book already instead of quoting blurbs.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 16, 2009 6:53 AM
@Adrienne #76 & 77:
And you call me clueless.
Caltech relies upon admissions criteria that purport to be objective. Those criteria are essentially SAT results. Wealthy white neighbourhoods tend to have good schools that get good SATs results, in part because there is some correlation between wealth and heritable ability, and in part because the schools are able to get on with teaching their students, and tend to attract the better teachers. Poor black people tend to live in poor black neighbourhoods where the schools don't have those advantages.
As for Asian minorities - I know that there is a tradition in the Asian communities of which I am aware that puts very strong emphasis on education.
Again, SATs can be tutored. Rich people (amongst whom there are a disproportionate number of whites, particularly males) can afford tutors for their offspring. Poor black people (of whom there are a disproportionate number) cannot afford tutors.
SAT scores (without control for inter alia socio-economic status and cultural factors) a reliable measure of ability? It is to laugh. This is after all one of the major criticisms of the "Bell Curve" claims on race and intelligence - that the proponents rely upon purportedly objective criteria to demonstrate white and Asian intellectual superiority over blacks, and fail to control for the cultural, demographic and socio-economic factors that skew results. You come dangerously close to espousing the Bell Curve arguments. That is why I'm surprised at the tone of your comments in this thread.
As for reading the book; why? You are arguing from the authority of the book; you can tell me what is in it and how it supports your argument. So far, however, you have simply offered generalised commentary on what it says, proposing an interpretation that is plainly at odds with the blurb that you referred us to; and at odds with other reviews I have read. In the time it takes for me to read the book (I do have other priorities like earning a living) this blog will have moved on. You want to trump discussion by relying upon the book - fine, it's your responsibility accurately to set out what it says both for and against your arguments.
Interestingly, the form of AA that Golden apparently says "penalize[s] low-income families, many of them Asian, that have sacrificed to move to districts where their children can attend better schools" is one of the forms of AA to which you have given qualified approval. According to this review (http://www.equaleducation.org/commentary.asp?opedid=1406) this is the race-blind form of AA introduced into California to correct specifically for disadvantage: "Given his passion for the underdog, Golden is surprisingly critical of California’s efforts, in the wake of Proposition 209 banning the use of race in admissions, to give a leg up to low-income and working-class students who have overcome obstacles. One of the factors counted in favor of an applicant is coming from an economically disadvantaged school district." - which precedes (in that review) the passage I quote above.
You said that:
in #37.
Yet you disagree that this means that:
And you call me clueless.
If the black students at Caltech do no worse than, and occasionally/sometimes/frequently/always (it doesn't matter which) do better than, their non-black peers, then black students as a body outperform their non-black counterparts. You cannot have a group that has no members worse than average, and some of whose members are better than average, that is not - on average - better than average. That is the way the numbers work - its hardly rocket engineering.
BTW, I'm not Canadian, eh.
Posted by: Robin Levett | June 16, 2009 8:54 AM
Golden is surprisingly critical of California’s efforts, in the wake of Proposition 209 banning the use of race in admissions, to give a leg up to low-income and working-class students who have overcome obstacles...
Because what the UCs found is that doing this still helped poor whites and Asians while not resulting in "enough" blacks and Hispanics being admitted. So they junked it in favor of thinly veiled race-based "diversity and experience" points.
Caltech relies upon admissions criteria that purport to be objective. Those criteria are essentially SAT results.
It's grades, science-related passion and achievements, and test scores, yes. Because you know what? Grades and SAT scores considered together are the best predictors of academic success in college.
SAT scores (without control for inter alia socio-economic status and cultural factors) a reliable measure of ability? It is to laugh.
SAT scores alone are not a reliable measure of ability. But SAT scores plus grades (and probably cultural attitudes towards education) are. And while tutoring can raise SAT scores somewhat, it still doesn't account for all racial gaps in test scores. Also, math test scores are an especially reliable indicator of success in math and science courses. And interestingly enough, poor untutored Asians (and whites) still outscore poor untutored NAMs. In fact, at least one study found that poor whites outscored affluent NAMs, with the latter probably having access to tutors.
This is also probably due in no small part due to the fact that, as you put it
...there is a tradition in the Asian communities of which I am aware that puts very strong emphasis on education.
As there has been for decades in the Jewish community.
Poor black people tend to live in poor black neighbourhoods where the schools don't have those advantages.
And once again, poor black people are not the majority of black people being helped by race-based AA. No, middle-class and upper-middle-class black students are the chief beneficiaries of race-based AA, which is why in large part I think it's such a scam.
This is after all one of the major criticisms of the "Bell Curve" claims on race and intelligence - that the proponents rely upon purportedly objective criteria to demonstrate white and Asian intellectual superiority over blacks, and fail to control for the cultural, demographic and socio-economic factors that skew results.
There are studies that control for socio-economic factors that still show the pattern that the Bell Curve reports in terms of intelligence and standardized test scoring: Highest scorers to lowest scorers are Ashkenazi Jews/Asians, non-Jewish whites, Hispanics, blacks. Nobody so far has been able to break that pattern, despite controlling for all sorts of socioeconomic factors. Upper-middle class black students with tutoring still score, on average, below poor untutored Asians on the SATs.
Is this due to nature, nurture, culture, or some combination of all three? My suspicion is its the latter, but of course, you can't say that in "polite" society.
And before you start denouncing me again as racist, let me say VERY CLEARLY that I think intelligence and SATs and so on do measure some forms of intelligence, but by no means all or even most forms of intelligence. I believe in "multiple intelligences". My father-in-law was an awful student but did extremely well on the job and rose up the corporate ladder because of his people smarts and charisma...my husband, so far, seems to be following the same pattern. My mother-in-law is an amazing pastry chef and chocolate sculptor but also was a poor student in every school except for culinary school. None of these people are stupid.
BUT...particularly when you are talking about academic settings and especially math/science courses of study such as engineering curricula, grades plus SAT scores are good predictors of academic success. I also think cultural factors play a big role; Asians and Jews are well-known for having strong cultural beliefs in and investments in education. Poor blacks, Hispanics, and whites for that matter...not so much.
In fact, poor blacks and poor Hispanics tend to actively disparage educational achievement, especially poor blacks. Read the WaPo articles on Cedric Jennings to find out what he as a poor black inner-city kid with an appetite for learning had to endure at his school from the other black kids.
And speaking of the Bell Curve, your argument that Wealthy white neighbourhoods tend to have good schools that get good SATs results, in part because there is some correlation between wealth and heritable ability (emphasis mine) seems to be veering into that territory as well.
I would actually disagree with what you said here. Intelligence is clearly at least partly heritable, but intelligence is by no means a guarantee of or a neceessary component for wealth.
And back to Caltech: I checked the book and I was actually wrong. Golden's finding of blacks doing as well as or slightly better than their peers was at Berea College, not Caltech. But even if it had been at Caltech, it was not a case of "all black students did overwhelmingly better than all of their non-black peers," which is what would happen if Caltech were really discriminating against blacks (which they aren't). No, they are only admitting those students, regardless of wealth, status, race, etc., who can survive and thrive in the Caltech environment.
..you are proposing an interpretation that is plainly at odds with the blurb that you referred us to...
Blurbs do not equal an entire book. Blurbs are culled to attract readers to buy the book. They do not necessarily give a picture of tone of the entire book. AND, as I have repeatedly said, I oppose all forms of AA, hidden and not-hidden. Enough said.
BTW, I'm not Canadian, eh.
Then you're even more clueless about American college admissions.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 16, 2009 9:28 AM
Correction: Race-based AA keeps the poor white man (and woman) down. It keeps the Asian man (and woman) down even more.
"Keeps the Asian down?!" Are you fucking kidding me? I've been working in the IT business for most of my working life, and trust me, I couldn't spill my tea in any direction without hitting an Asian. And they're not janitors either, they're software developers and engineers. They're not exactly being "kept down" in electronics either.
Sorry, Adrienne, but you have no idea what you're talking about.
Posted by: Raging Bee | June 16, 2009 10:05 AM
RB: You're right, actually. I should have been more specific. All forms of AA keep Asians down in terms of getting a fair shake in college admissions.
Not in "real life", though.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 16, 2009 10:39 AM
And, as Golden points out, Asians still do pretty well despite being discriminated against in college admissions and having to face quotas designed to limit their numbers at elite schools. Just like the Jews of old. That's why he calls them, "The New Jews".
That still doesn't make all forms of AA any less of an injustice or any less of a scam.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 16, 2009 10:43 AM
Asians still do pretty well despite being discriminated against in college admissions and having to face quotas designed to limit their numbers at elite schools.
One reason they do so well could be that the "discrimination" you speak of is nowhere near as significant as people like you seem to think it is.
Just like the Jews of old. That's why he calls them, "The New Jews".
Are you at all aware of Pat Buchanan's history of old-world mindless bigotry? If he's equating anyone to Jews, chances are it's not at all complimentary.
I should have been more specific. All forms of AA keep Asians down in terms of getting a fair shake in college admissions.
You call that "specific?" That's just another dumb-ass overbroad generalization. Actually, it's three dumb-ass overbroad generalizations in one sentence.
Posted by: Raging Bee | June 16, 2009 10:54 AM
All forms of AA keep Asians down in terms of getting a fair shake in college admissions.
Given that Asians are doing quite well in certain professions that require a college degree just to get in, I'd say your revised generalization is still crap.
Posted by: Raging Bee | June 16, 2009 10:57 AM
RB: You are obviously predisposed to dismiss whatever I say as "mindless", "overgeneralized", etc., because you clearly disagree with the conclusion that "affirmative action, including race-based affirmative action is unfair". You don't want to hear or even consider that there might be good arguments and even evidence to the contrary. In that you are acting like a denialist, but that is your right.
So, I'm done debating with you because you have been nothing but abusive to me.
PS: It wasn't Buchanan who called Asians "the new Jews", but then you're obviously not reading my posts so much as reacting in a negatively knee-jerk fashion to them because what I say doesn't fit your nice preconceived view of how the world (and college admissions) should work.
This is my last response to you, so have at it with the name calling again, please.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 16, 2009 10:59 AM
Having said all this is any of it Sotomayor's fault? Are we criticizing her or the AA system, or both?
Posted by: Jim Thomrson | June 16, 2009 8:40 PM
I really wonder if Judge Sotomayor was admitted because of affirmative action. She may have suspected it, but is it really true.
I noticed that many people think all black people have been admitted to college, because of affirmative action. Some as old as me, which got in an institution simply because it became desegregated and I didn't choose to go to a HBCU.
Most people do not go to the top ten schools and a lot of black people get into colleges without going the community college route and graduate on time, just like their white counterparts. What really gets me in this discussion, is that it has led to the discussion of the bell curve. Among the white population how many Nobel Prize winners do we have compared to the population and what is the percentage of the white population are students in those top universities? I would say they would be considered outliers on a bell curve based on those properties.
A college education is necessary in these times and I think if every school used Caltech's admission policy, there wouldn't be many white folks getting that degree and some colleges and universities would have to lower their standards.
People like Buchanan make those kind of statements, because they want minorities to feel guilty, to share their moral failings; what they want is for us to take on white guilt.
To shame us after 300 years of oppression, making us responsible for bigotry toward us, where the Founders revolted over much less, we now have to forgive and be the moral compass of America. GIVE ME A BREAK!
Posted by: Hathor | June 16, 2009 10:54 PM
Adrienne is operating with one fundamental misunderstanding which permeates every post she has made on this topic: she thinks that it is possible to objectively rank college applicants. In her world, all 30,000 Harvard applicants can be ranked from 1 to 30,000. If Harvard plans to accept 2400 students next year then they should accept #1 through #2400. In her world, if student 2399 is denied and student 2401 is accepted then student 2399 has been treated unjustly. She has no concept (or is unwilling to accept) the fact that there is no yardstick which allows one to measure a cellist vs a chess player and assign an absolute rank to each. Nor can she cope with the reality that in college admissions there are three groups of kids:
1. absolutely in,
2. absolutely out and
3. make an informed judgment.
In fact, in her rhapsody about CalTech's 'objective' standards she torpedoes her own case. The factors they use are "grades, science-related passion and achievements, and test scores."
Any person who thinks that 'science-related passion and achievements' can be objectively quantified is not living in the real world. What this really means is 'the nerdy grownups at CalTech who wore thick glasses and entered science fairs will score nerdy kids with thick glasses and lots of science fair experience highly.' Which, oddly enough, would lead to a CalTech with lots of white and Asian kids and few African-American kids.
Imagine that. . .
Posted by: Opus | June 16, 2009 11:35 PM
Opus --
Exactly what I was trying to say earlier, but not as clearly as you have.
Buchanan and commenter mroberts make the same mistake. Admissions decisions are not like pigeon-holing applicants, or ranking them 1-2400. Admissions staffs can make quick and clear decisions about the 10% of applicants on either end of the spectrum: the kid is either a definite yes or a definite no. Picking from the huge group of maybes takes finesse, judgment, experience and some dumb luck. And, within any admissions office, the staff members often debate among themselves who gets in and who not.
It is not a deterministic process, so arguing that accepting Brown Person A means White Person B has lost his or her place in line is grossly oversimplifying the process.
That said, I can also understand where adrienne is coming from when she complains about Spanish-surnamed applicants (for example) taking advantage of a university's presumed desire for more Hispanic students. Some of those families have been here longer than the USA has existed, and are far from being disadvantaged.
Still, one wonders how successful a Diaz, Lopez, or Fernandez applicant would have been in gaining admission to Princeton before the 1960s, no matter their family income or colonial heritage. Princeton used to be a very lily WASPy, all-male kind of place for most of its 267-year history. The current diversity among its student body developed only during the last 40 years or so.
Posted by: wheatdogg | June 17, 2009 1:42 AM
Opus --
Exactly what I was trying to say earlier, but not as clearly as you have.
Buchanan and commenter mroberts make the same mistake. Admissions decisions are not like pigeon-holing applicants, or ranking them 1-2400. Admissions staffs can make quick and clear decisions about the 10% of applicants on either end of the spectrum: the kid is either a definite yes or a definite no. Picking from the huge group of maybes takes finesse, judgment, experience and some dumb luck. And, within any admissions office, the staff members often debate among themselves who gets in and who not.
It is not a deterministic process, so arguing that accepting Brown Person A means White Person B has lost his or her place in line is grossly oversimplifying the process.
That said, I can also understand where adrienne is coming from when she complains about Spanish-surnamed applicants (for example) taking advantage of a university's presumed desire for more Hispanic students. Some of those families have been here longer than the USA has existed, and are far from being disadvantaged.
Still, one wonders how successful a Diaz, Lopez, or Fernandez applicant would have been in gaining admission to Princeton before the 1960s, no matter their family income or colonial heritage. Princeton used to be a very lily WASPy, all-male kind of place for most of its 267-year history. The current diversity among its student body developed only during the last 40 years or so.
Posted by: wheatdogg | June 17, 2009 4:27 AM
Opus --
Exactly what I was trying to say earlier, but not as clearly as you have.
Buchanan and commenter mroberts make the same mistake. Admissions decisions are not like pigeon-holing applicants, or ranking them 1-2400. Admissions staffs can make quick and clear decisions about the 10% of applicants on either end of the spectrum: the kid is either a definite yes or a definite no. Picking from the huge group of maybes takes finesse, judgment, experience and some dumb luck. And, within any admissions office, the staff members often debate among themselves who gets in and who not.
It is not a deterministic process, so arguing that accepting Brown Person A means White Person B has lost his or her place in line is grossly oversimplifying the process.
That said, I can also understand where adrienne is coming from when she complains about Spanish-surnamed applicants (for example) taking advantage of a university's presumed desire for more Hispanic students. Some of those families have been here longer than the USA has existed, and are far from being disadvantaged.
Still, one wonders how successful a Diaz, Lopez, or Fernandez applicant would have been in gaining admission to Princeton before the 1960s, no matter their family income or colonial heritage. Princeton used to be a very lily WASPy, all-male kind of place for most of its 267-year history. The current diversity among its student body developed only during the last 40 years or so.
Posted by: wheatdogg | June 17, 2009 10:48 AM
Opus --
Exactly what I was trying to say earlier, but not as clearly as you have.
Buchanan and commenter mroberts make the same mistake. Admissions decisions are not like pigeon-holing applicants, or ranking them 1-2400. Admissions staffs can make quick and clear decisions about the 10% of applicants on either end of the spectrum: the kid is either a definite yes or a definite no. Picking from the huge group of maybes takes finesse, judgment, experience and some dumb luck. And, within any admissions office, the staff members often debate among themselves who gets in and who not.
It is not a deterministic process, so arguing that accepting Brown Person A means White Person B has lost his or her place in line is grossly oversimplifying the process.
That said, I can also understand where adrienne is coming from when she complains about Spanish-surnamed applicants (for example) taking advantage of a university's presumed desire for more Hispanic students. Some of those families have been here longer than the USA has existed, and are far from being disadvantaged.
Still, one wonders how successful a Diaz, Lopez, or Fernandez applicant would have been in gaining admission to Princeton before the 1960s, no matter their family income or colonial heritage. Princeton used to be a very lily WASPy, all-male kind of place for most of its 267-year history. The current diversity among its student body developed only during the last 40 years or so.
Posted by: wheatdogg | June 17, 2009 10:51 AM
She has no concept (or is unwilling to accept) the fact that there is no yardstick which allows one to measure a cellist vs a chess player and assign an absolute rank to each.
On top of all that, even if you judged applicants ONLY by quantifiable factors, such as class grades, GPA and SAT scores, you'd still have the problem of deciding how much relative weight to assign each of these measures. IANAE, but I'm pretty sure there's really no "objective" means of judgement that will satisfy everyone and withstand all questioning.
On a broader note, opponents of "AA" (whatever the Hell they mean by that) tend to imagine that without AA, hiring and admissions decisions would be consistently fair and objective. Basically, they're comparing the real unfairness of AA with an imagined world where no other unfairness exists; and this is where most of their reasoning fails.
Posted by: Raging Bee | June 17, 2009 11:01 AM
Somewhere in her comments, Adrienne makes plain that she came from a background that was not underprivileged, and that her father thought AA sucked and that hispanics should not get any special treatment because they were hispanics. She also says that she is white hispanic. I find that folks who have never been told that they are "less", often think that those who have been told that are manufacturing a grievance. I wish that were true, it's not. AA is the result of "white guilt"--there is no doubt about it. There is also no doubt that the guilt is richly deserved and if AA is one of the vehicles of expiation of that guilt, then it's got a good deal longer to run on its warranty.
Quick aside. I live in an area where there are lots of hockey teams. Very few blacks, as a percentage, play hockey. Is this because they are too dumb to figure it out, too unwilling to brave the cold or not as athletic as the whites (nearly exclusively represented on hockey teams at all levels)? No. It is because hockey equipment is expensive and there are NO ice rinks in de ghetto.
Posted by: tkmanion | June 19, 2009 8:30 AM
Agh! I definitely did not send that post three additional times! So don't ridicule me for not reading the directions. I am on the other side of the Great Firewall of China, and sometimes I get a "cannot connect to the website" message. In such cases, I have to reload the page and Firefox resends the info. So don't blame me.
That said, why can't the IT Gods at ScienceBlogs have a script to detect duplicate comments and to delete all but the first? Shouldn't be that hard to do.
Posted by: wheatdogg | June 23, 2009 7:44 AM
Does anyone actually know what Sotomayor scored on the SAT and LSAT ? What were they ?
A few of points with the caveat that I attended a different ivy league law school graduating contemporaneously with Sotomayor:
1) I believe that Yale Law School 1st year is past fail; if you breathe at the end of the year, you pass.
2) Your second and third year can include a lot of "soft" electives (public service classes) that can distort grade point.
3) A law review position at Yale is not necessarily based on merit; affirmative action spots are held open for a third of the board.
Posted by: TheCounsellor | July 13, 2009 3:05 PM
TheCounsellor - In other words, it doesn't matter what this woman accomplishes in her life. You'll find some convoluted reason to disparage it.
Posted by: Taz | July 13, 2009 3:41 PM