Ivy League Affirmative Action from the inside

[Anonymous]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/418530/what-ivy-league-affirmative-action-really-looks-inside-david-french

My second year on the faculty, I served on the admissions committee, and I saw firsthand how not just race but ideology distorts the admissions process. Ivy League admissions are one part meritocracy — the students are quite bright — and one part ideological engineering. And if Americans broadly understood how the process works, support for affirmative action would diminish even further.

Second, these dramatic breaks rarely go to poor kids who are overcoming the challenges of ghetto schools. Many Americans, myself included, understand it is a real and substantial achievement — one that can’t be measured in test scores — to overcome extreme poverty and America’s worst public schools to compete with students from far more prosperous backgrounds. But the same reasoning doesn’t apply to the children of doctors and lawyers. Yet they get dramatic advantages as well. In fact, unless admissions committees gave rich black and Latino kids dramatic advantages, they wouldn’t be able to hit their diversity targets. At the Ivy League level, affirmative action is an enhanced-opportunity program for favored rich kids.

When Malia and Sasha go to college, they'll be counted in the same 'diversity' stat as a hood kid who needs a genuine break to get in.

It was sobering to see the immense achievement gap between most of the black and Latino applicants and their white and especially Asian counterparts. But I couldn’t help but think that part of that gap was due to the well-known lowered expectations for favored minorities. Even achievement-oriented students tend to work hard enough to accomplish their goals — and no harder. Why tell the best and brightest black and Latino students that they don’t have to do as well, that they can take their foot off the accelerator and still attend the best schools?

In the interests of full disclosure: My youngest daughter is black, adopted from Ethiopia. The last thing I want to see is her placed in a school where she’s not equipped to compete and succeed. I love her too much to see her well-being sacrificed so an academic liberal — not matter how well-intentioned — can meet a quota.

This is the mismatch affect - that you are hurting the ones you hope to help when you throw them into an academic environment.

[Anonymous]

Malia and Sasha will get in wherever they apply because their dad is the president, not because they're black.

[Anonymous]

Agree^

[Anonymous]

1921/2003, but in the grand scheme of 'shaping a class' they will count towards the URM soft quota when schools fill a class up.

[Anonymous]

I'd like to see some data to back up these claims. I've worked at several elite universities and now I work for a non-profit that helps low-income, first-gen students get to college. I've seen quite a few black and latino students overmatch (based on test scores) at elite college and they generally do quite well.

[Anonymous]

Great article and we are going to see the same thing happen for TJ admissions in the next few years. Asian American students comprise 20% of FCPS population, but about 70% of TJ students. That kind of "diversity" isn't acceptable to many, and there is a huge push to change the racial makeup of the school.

[Anonymous]

um, I think Obama's kids will have something entirely different going for them than race.

I can't tell if the quotes are from someone who thinks they shouldn't take Black kids or that they shouldn't take those particular Black kids. This ridiculous fear that African Americans are somehow taking over and getting unfair breaks has been circulating in racist circles for ages and yet I look around and its still a white dominated world.

You are not entitled to get into a particular college. It is not your spot. They can do with it whatever they want.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:um, I think Obama's kids will have something entirely different going for them than race.

I can't tell if the quotes are from someone who thinks they shouldn't take Black kids or that they shouldn't take those particular Black kids. This ridiculous fear that African Americans are somehow taking over and getting unfair breaks has been circulating in racist circles for ages and yet I look around and its still a white dominated world.

You are not entitled to get into a particular college. It is not your spot. They can do with it whatever they want.

+1000!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:um, I think Obama's kids will have something entirely different going for them than race.

I can't tell if the quotes are from someone who thinks they shouldn't take Black kids or that they shouldn't take those particular Black kids. This ridiculous fear that African Americans are somehow taking over and getting unfair breaks has been circulating in racist circles for ages and yet I look around and its still a white dominated world.

You are not entitled to get into a particular college. It is not your spot. They can do with it whatever they want.

+1000!

To a point. On this issue, they can only do what the Supreme Court allows them to do or, for state schools in CA and MI, what the enacted ballot initiatives allow them to do. Justice O'Connor said, in dicta in the MI case, that she hoped affirmative action would sunset in 20 years (or whatever). Not gonna happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Great article and we are going to see the same thing happen for TJ admissions in the next few years. Asian American students comprise 20% of FCPS population, but about 70% of TJ students. That kind of "diversity" isn't acceptable to many, and there is a huge push to change the racial makeup of the school.

And stuy and the elite nyc magnets - but for some reason people love it when the nba and nfl show a lack of diversity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:um, I think Obama's kids will have something entirely different going for them than race.

I can't tell if the quotes are from someone who thinks they shouldn't take Black kids or that they shouldn't take those particular Black kids. This ridiculous fear that African Americans are somehow taking over and getting unfair breaks has been circulating in racist circles for ages and yet I look around and its still a white dominated world.

You are not entitled to get into a particular college. It is not your spot. They can do with it whatever they want.

+1000!

To a point. On this issue, they can only do what the Supreme Court allows them to do or, for state schools in CA and MI, what the enacted ballot initiatives allow them to do. Justice O'Connor said, in dicta in the MI case, that she hoped affirmative action would sunset in 20 years (or whatever). Not gonna happen.

All the liberal judges on the bench on the outside feel something like that - that it should sunset.

On the inside, they know that shit will never sunset.

[Anonymous]

Legacy affirmative action is more pervasive and virtually invisible. You'll never even know that Chip's grandfather was an alum. You just assume he 'belongs' there.

[Anonymous]

David French has an adopted 4 or 5 year old black daughter. It will be interesting to see what he posts when his daughter is 18. Let's see if his daughter experiences lowered expectations in school. I see it with my minority sons. There is an assumption that they aren't smart, just athletic. Every year teachers are so surprised they are in the top reading and math groups. In kindergarten a friend who is Asian told me her child got accelerated work and homework from the first week of school, while it took until October or November for my son to get the same work while he is actually more advanced than she is (according to her mom who volunteers in class). She told me the teacher commented to her that she was so surprised how well my son could do math. Minority kid does well in school it is surprising; Asian kid does well it is expected.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great article and we are going to see the same thing happen for TJ admissions in the next few years. Asian American students comprise 20% of FCPS population, but about 70% of TJ students. That kind of "diversity" isn't acceptable to many, and there is a huge push to change the racial makeup of the school.

And stuy and the elite nyc magnets - but for some reason people love it when the nba and nfl show a lack of diversity.

This is pretty dumb. The NFL and NBA are not educational institutions with a public mission. They are revenue generating enterprises. Their goal is to make money....period.

[Anonymous]

I hate to tell a lot of you this, but most minorities do not give a rat's ass how we got the opportunity or what you call it, or even waht you think about it - we just want the opportunity. The shame and stigma that some assign to Affirmative Action is a White person's thing.

Further, the data that I have seen (I used to work in a university setting) shows that the level of academic attrition among White, Black and Latinos is very similar - and much lower for Asian students. So...it is not like these kids are getting into these schools and flunking out at a higher rate.