Affirmative Action and Race Discussions Should Be Moved to Its Own Forum

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For the last time. You solve this entire issue by abolishing Affirmative Action. Until you do that you will have people assuming URM (blacks/hispanics) being in certain places due to affirmative action.

Personal experience when I got my MBA top 5 program About half of the AA and Hispanics actually belonged there. The other half clearly didn't. This was also true for the international students. They wern't dumb but they were clearly a cut below the rest of my other classmates which again included many really great AA, Hispanics, and International students but not all

But why should URM care about how you think they got there?

I am not saying that you are doing this, but the extreme version of this type of thinking is typical of the mind games that many Whites play with the young AA’s. Folks want them to feel bad about the opportunities they have. They end up questioning whether they deserve certain things or whether they belong certain places. Problem is that a lot of these young people don’t have adequate support to counteract these messages. Some of them come from places where they already feel less advantaged when they hit campus. Many of them are first generation college students so they do not have knowledgeable support at home. They end up feeling like they do not belong – too embarrassed to ask for help and use the resources that are available to them. When I talk to some of these youngsters that I know who had difficulty, they talk about not “fitting in.” Then you have parents like me who tell our kids to ignore that shit. If you ARE THERE, you belong there! Mold the experience to fit and benefit you! If someone wants to whine about how they think you got there, let them. It means that they feel threatened and they fear you enough to try to test your resolve. They ARE going to try to knock you off path and they are competing with you. My parents told me (and I tell my own kids) to be committed to my own success. Matters not how you start but how you finish. Be a finisher. If you get good grades or you prove your value to your employer, the people that matter could not care less how you got there – only that you ARE there.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like you are a great parent/mentor for people

Again I think if you eliminate Affirmative Action all of the questioning goes away. I try to be pretty open minded but it was clear to me there were too many students in my classes that simply didn't belong there and this has continued throughout my professional career. Not all the time but often enough for me to admit that I have biases on occasion due to past experiences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For the last time. You solve this entire issue by abolishing Affirmative Action. Until you do that you will have people assuming URM (blacks/hispanics) being in certain places due to affirmative action.

Personal experience when I got my MBA top 5 program About half of the AA and Hispanics actually belonged there. The other half clearly didn't. This was also true for the international students. They wern't dumb but they were clearly a cut below the rest of my other classmates which again included many really great AA, Hispanics, and International students but not all

But why should URM care about how you think they got there?

I am not saying that you are doing this, but the extreme version of this type of thinking is typical of the mind games that many Whites play with the young AA’s. Folks want them to feel bad about the opportunities they have. They end up questioning whether they deserve certain things or whether they belong certain places. Problem is that a lot of these young people don’t have adequate support to counteract these messages. Some of them come from places where they already feel less advantaged when they hit campus. Many of them are first generation college students so they do not have knowledgeable support at home. They end up feeling like they do not belong – too embarrassed to ask for help and use the resources that are available to them. When I talk to some of these youngsters that I know who had difficulty, they talk about not “fitting in.” Then you have parents like me who tell our kids to ignore that shit. If you ARE THERE, you belong there! Mold the experience to fit and benefit you! If someone wants to whine about how they think you got there, let them. It means that they feel threatened and they fear you enough to try to test your resolve. They ARE going to try to knock you off path and they are competing with you. My parents told me (and I tell my own kids) to be committed to my own success. Matters not how you start but how you finish. Be a finisher. If you get good grades or you prove your value to your employer, the people that matter could not care less how you got there – only that you ARE there.

The presence of Affirmative Action means that someone loses an opportunity. You must take away from one group to give to another in an environment with limited spots such as a university or work setting. How do you expect a member of the group that lost out to react? Of course you don't know if a URM took a spot that might otherwise have been yours. No one provides a break down that says "These X number of people would have been admitted except for AA". So you are left to wonder if you are the one that lost out. And the URM's that are admitted all get the label of AA admits, which is massively unfair to those that would have been admitted in any scenario. It's time to get rid of AA - it's bad for everyone involved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For the last time. You solve this entire issue by abolishing Affirmative Action. Until you do that you will have people assuming URM (blacks/hispanics) being in certain places due to affirmative action.

Personal experience when I got my MBA top 5 program About half of the AA and Hispanics actually belonged there. The other half clearly didn't. This was also true for the international students. They wern't dumb but they were clearly a cut below the rest of my other classmates which again included many really great AA, Hispanics, and International students but not all

But why should URM care about how you think they got there?

I am not saying that you are doing this, but the extreme version of this type of thinking is typical of the mind games that many Whites play with the young AA’s. Folks want them to feel bad about the opportunities they have. They end up questioning whether they deserve certain things or whether they belong certain places. Problem is that a lot of these young people don’t have adequate support to counteract these messages. Some of them come from places where they already feel less advantaged when they hit campus. Many of them are first generation college students so they do not have knowledgeable support at home. They end up feeling like they do not belong – too embarrassed to ask for help and use the resources that are available to them. When I talk to some of these youngsters that I know who had difficulty, they talk about not “fitting in.” Then you have parents like me who tell our kids to ignore that shit. If you ARE THERE, you belong there! Mold the experience to fit and benefit you! If someone wants to whine about how they think you got there, let them. It means that they feel threatened and they fear you enough to try to test your resolve. They ARE going to try to knock you off path and they are competing with you. My parents told me (and I tell my own kids) to be committed to my own success. Matters not how you start but how you finish. Be a finisher. If you get good grades or you prove your value to your employer, the people that matter could not care less how you got there – only that you ARE there.

Wonderful response, astute observation, and realistic reasoning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For the last time. You solve this entire issue by abolishing Affirmative Action. Until you do that you will have people assuming URM (blacks/hispanics) being in certain places due to affirmative action.

Personal experience when I got my MBA top 5 program About half of the AA and Hispanics actually belonged there. The other half clearly didn't. This was also true for the international students. They wern't dumb but they were clearly a cut below the rest of my other classmates which again included many really great AA, Hispanics, and International students but not all

But why should URM care about how you think they got there?

I am not saying that you are doing this, but the extreme version of this type of thinking is typical of the mind games that many Whites play with the young AA’s. Folks want them to feel bad about the opportunities they have. They end up questioning whether they deserve certain things or whether they belong certain places. Problem is that a lot of these young people don’t have adequate support to counteract these messages. Some of them come from places where they already feel less advantaged when they hit campus. Many of them are first generation college students so they do not have knowledgeable support at home. They end up feeling like they do not belong – too embarrassed to ask for help and use the resources that are available to them. When I talk to some of these youngsters that I know who had difficulty, they talk about not “fitting in.” Then you have parents like me who tell our kids to ignore that shit. If you ARE THERE, you belong there! Mold the experience to fit and benefit you! If someone wants to whine about how they think you got there, let them. It means that they feel threatened and they fear you enough to try to test your resolve. They ARE going to try to knock you off path and they are competing with you. My parents told me (and I tell my own kids) to be committed to my own success. Matters not how you start but how you finish. Be a finisher. If you get good grades or you prove your value to your employer, the people that matter could not care less how you got there – only that you ARE there.

The presence of Affirmative Action means that someone loses an opportunity. You must take away from one group to give to another in an environment with limited spots such as a university or work setting. How do you expect a member of the group that lost out to react? Of course you don't know if a URM took a spot that might otherwise have been yours. No one provides a break down that says "These X number of people would have been admitted except for AA". So you are left to wonder if you are the one that lost out. And the URM's that are admitted all get the label of AA admits, which is massively unfair to those that would have been admitted in any scenario. It's time to get rid of AA - it's bad for everyone involved.

Interesting way to look at it - sounds like pure scapegoating to me TBH. Because many (including me) would say that it gives opportunities. But I could see how someone in the majority would see it your way. No offense to you or anyone else, but IME, the people most up in arms about AffAc are "mediocre" candidates when compared to their demographic peers. So yea, you have people saying "If those Hispanic kids had not gotten in, there would have been 10 more spots for me and that is the ONLY reason I did not get in." Umm no - not necessarily. Maybe you were a weak candidate compared against people like you. Instead of making yourself competitive with the other 90% of students in the class, you are worried about less than 10% of the class "taking opportunities" from you.

Would you support AffAc based on SES?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For the last time. You solve this entire issue by abolishing Affirmative Action. Until you do that you will have people assuming URM (blacks/hispanics) being in certain places due to affirmative action.

Personal experience when I got my MBA top 5 program About half of the AA and Hispanics actually belonged there. The other half clearly didn't. This was also true for the international students. They wern't dumb but they were clearly a cut below the rest of my other classmates which again included many really great AA, Hispanics, and International students but not all

But why should URM care about how you think they got there?

I am not saying that you are doing this, but the extreme version of this type of thinking is typical of the mind games that many Whites play with the young AA’s. Folks want them to feel bad about the opportunities they have. They end up questioning whether they deserve certain things or whether they belong certain places. Problem is that a lot of these young people don’t have adequate support to counteract these messages. Some of them come from places where they already feel less advantaged when they hit campus. Many of them are first generation college students so they do not have knowledgeable support at home. They end up feeling like they do not belong – too embarrassed to ask for help and use the resources that are available to them. When I talk to some of these youngsters that I know who had difficulty, they talk about not “fitting in.” Then you have parents like me who tell our kids to ignore that shit. If you ARE THERE, you belong there! Mold the experience to fit and benefit you! If someone wants to whine about how they think you got there, let them. It means that they feel threatened and they fear you enough to try to test your resolve. They ARE going to try to knock you off path and they are competing with you. My parents told me (and I tell my own kids) to be committed to my own success. Matters not how you start but how you finish. Be a finisher. If you get good grades or you prove your value to your employer, the people that matter could not care less how you got there – only that you ARE there.

The presence of Affirmative Action means that someone loses an opportunity. You must take away from one group to give to another in an environment with limited spots such as a university or work setting. How do you expect a member of the group that lost out to react? Of course you don't know if a URM took a spot that might otherwise have been yours. No one provides a break down that says "These X number of people would have been admitted except for AA". So you are left to wonder if you are the one that lost out. And the URM's that are admitted all get the label of AA admits, which is massively unfair to those that would have been admitted in any scenario. It's time to get rid of AA - it's bad for everyone involved.

Interesting way to look at it - sounds like pure scapegoating to me TBH. Because many (including me) would say that it gives opportunities. But I could see how someone in the majority would see it your way. No offense to you or anyone else, but IME, the people most up in arms about AffAc are "mediocre" candidates when compared to their demographic peers. So yea, you have people saying "If those Hispanic kids had not gotten in, there would have been 10 more spots for me and that is the ONLY reason I did not get in." Umm no - not necessarily. Maybe you were a weak candidate compared against people like you. Instead of making yourself competitive with the other 90% of students in the class, you are worried about less than 10% of the class "taking opportunities" from you.

Would you support AffAc based on SES?

If 100 students apply for 10 spots, and are stack ranked based purely on academic stats, the the top 10 students get in. Now lets say 12 of the students that applied are African American - proportional to their percentage of the US population. And schools says we want 2 AA students in our 10 spots. Maybe those two students would have been in the top 10, maybe not. No one really knows because the schools won't say. Maybe two non-URM's didn't get a spot because of AffAc. They are left to wonder. We know 90 wouldn't get a spot, so your point about you wouldn't have got in otherwise is well taken.

Think of it this way in the above example - 12 URMs compete for 2 spots - a 1 in 6 chance. 88 non-URM's compete for 8 spots - a 1 in 11 chance. You absolutely have to disadvantage one group to favor another. There are not infinite student seats or jobs. So someone has to lose out.

I think SES is a much better way of looking at things. Texas has a program where if you are in the top 10% of your class, you are guaranteed admission to either UT or A&M. Given that HS's track the SES of the surrounding area, that makes perfect sense to me.