Supreme Court revisits Texas affirmative action in new case

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Again, every time there is a thread like this, certain commenters always indicate that in a "meritocracy," all minorities would be less qualified. And that's why I can't really hear anything else that is said.

"ACT Scores by Race:

Year White Black Asian
2009 22.2 16.9 23.2
2010 22.3 16.9 23.4
2011 22.4 17.0 23.6
2012 22.4 17.0 23.6
2013 22.2 16.9 23.5

Source: ACT, Inc.

Were I white or Asian, with an ACT score of 20, and denied admission by my dream universities, I'd be very annoyed by those numbers.

Time for race-based discrimination to stop. A new injustice doesn't solve an older one.

[Anonymous]

The average black student gets admission to the University of Texas with a score hundreds of points lower than white or Asian students.

Then upon entering the University of Texas, they often flounder. The graduation rate for UT as a whole is 78%, but for black students it is about 60%. And undoubtedly, the black students that do graduate do so with lower grades. Given either the lack of graduation or graduating with poor grades, these black students then face an uncertain career.

How is this good for anybody?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The average black student gets admission to the University of Texas with a score hundreds of points lower than white or Asian students.

Then upon entering the University of Texas, they often flounder. The graduation rate for UT as a whole is 78%, but for black students it is about 60%. And undoubtedly, the black students that do graduate do so with lower grades. Given either the lack of graduation or graduating with poor grades, these black students then face an uncertain career.

How is this good for anybody?

It's because of racism. Institutionalized racism. There can be no other explanation.

[Anonymous]

If the Supreme Court strikes race based affirmative action in higher education unconstitutional, American colleges and universities will likely replace those programs with class based affirmative action. In so doing, class based affirmative action programs will achieve more social and economic fairness in our society than any race based program.

Over the last 30 years, a large portion of America's once affluent middle class have become the working poor. America's wealth gap and economic inequality has grown to crisis levels. Class based affirmative action programs will help address that crisis by allowing children of the working poor access to higher education. Also, a class based affirmative action program cannot be challenge on constitutional grounds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The average black student gets admission to the University of Texas with a score hundreds of points lower than white or Asian students.

Then upon entering the University of Texas, they often flounder. The graduation rate for UT as a whole is 78%, but for black students it is about 60%. And undoubtedly, the black students that do graduate do so with lower grades. Given either the lack of graduation or graduating with poor grades, these black students then face an uncertain career.

How is this good for anybody?

It's because of racism. Institutionalized racism. There can be no other explanation.

Are you being sarcastic? I don't see anything wrong with thinking that some races are just genetically smarter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The average black student gets admission to the University of Texas with a score hundreds of points lower than white or Asian students.

Then upon entering the University of Texas, they often flounder. The graduation rate for UT as a whole is 78%, but for black students it is about 60%. And undoubtedly, the black students that do graduate do so with lower grades. Given either the lack of graduation or graduating with poor grades, these black students then face an uncertain career.

How is this good for anybody?

It's because of racism. Institutionalized racism. There can be no other explanation.

I agree. Despite what some claim, parenting and family life doesn't matter; there's just a major worldwide conspiracy against blacks, and the Supreme Court is on the verge of joining it.

May SPECTRE be involved?

[Anonymous]

The University of Texas characterizes racial and ethnic preference as "marginal" factors in its holistic admissions process, but they are actually determinative factors.

In an amicus brief filed in the Fisher vs. Texas case, UCLA law profession Richard Sander pointed out that racial preferences at the University of Texas are decisive factors:

“For example, among freshmen entering the University of Texas at Austin in 2009 who were admitted outside the top-ten-percent system, the mean SAT score (on a scale of 2400) of Asians was a staggering 467 points and the mean score of whites was 390 points above the mean black score.

In percentile terms, these Asians scored at the 93rd percentile of 2009 SAT takers nationwide, whites at the 89th percentile, Hispanics at the 80th percentile, and blacks at the 52nd percentile.” If racial and ethnic preferences were insignificant factors, the university would not be defending them before the Supreme Court.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The University of Texas characterizes racial and ethnic preference as "marginal" factors in its holistic admissions process, but they are actually determinative factors.

In an amicus brief filed in the Fisher vs. Texas case, UCLA law profession Richard Sander pointed out that racial preferences at the University of Texas are decisive factors:

“For example, among freshmen entering the University of Texas at Austin in 2009 who were admitted outside the top-ten-percent system, the mean SAT score (on a scale of 2400) of Asians was a staggering 467 points and the mean score of whites was 390 points above the mean black score.

In percentile terms, these Asians scored at the 93rd percentile of 2009 SAT takers nationwide, whites at the 89th percentile, Hispanics at the 80th percentile, and blacks at the 52nd percentile.” If racial and ethnic preferences were insignificant factors, the university would not be defending them before the Supreme Court.

That's astounding, and scary too.

[Anonymous]

I think is certainly a move in the right direction! Why shouldn't the most meritorious students receive admission?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think is certainly a move in the right direction! Why shouldn't the most meritorious students receive admission?

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Again, every time there is a thread like this, certain commenters always indicate that in a "meritocracy," all minorities would be less qualified. And that's why I can't really hear anything else that is said.

"ACT Scores by Race:

Year White Black Asian
2009 22.2 16.9 23.2
2010 22.3 16.9 23.4
2011 22.4 17.0 23.6
2012 22.4 17.0 23.6
2013 22.2 16.9 23.5

Source: ACT, Inc.

Were I white or Asian, with an ACT score of 20, and denied admission by my dream universities, I'd be very annoyed by those numbers.

Time for race-based discrimination to stop. A new injustice doesn't solve an older one.

asians are - the issue is, asian plaintiffs don't really complain re: public schools.

It would be really hard to get a suit against private schools to come up to scotus review.

hence why we get terrible plaintiffs like fisher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Again, every time there is a thread like this, certain commenters always indicate that in a "meritocracy," all minorities would be less qualified. And that's why I can't really hear anything else that is said.

"ACT Scores by Race:

Year White Black Asian
2009 22.2 16.9 23.2
2010 22.3 16.9 23.4
2011 22.4 17.0 23.6
2012 22.4 17.0 23.6
2013 22.2 16.9 23.5

Source: ACT, Inc.

Were I white or Asian, with an ACT score of 20, and denied admission by my dream universities, I'd be very annoyed by those numbers.

Time for race-based discrimination to stop. A new injustice doesn't solve an older one.

asians are - the issue is, asian plaintiffs don't really complain re: public schools.

It would be really hard to get a suit against private schools to come up to scotus review.

hence why we get terrible plaintiffs like fisher.

Why it is that Asians don't become more involved in fighting discrimination against them? I believe some Asian American groups recently sued Harvard -- why not sue every single public and private university who's discriminating again you in essentially the same way they discriminated against Jews decades ago?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If the Supreme Court strikes race based affirmative action in higher education unconstitutional, American colleges and universities will likely replace those programs with class based affirmative action. In so doing, class based affirmative action programs will achieve more social and economic fairness in our society than any race based program.

Over the last 30 years, a large portion of America's once affluent middle class have become the working poor. America's wealth gap and economic inequality has grown to crisis levels. Class based affirmative action programs will help address that crisis by allowing children of the working poor access to higher education. Also, a class based affirmative action program cannot be challenge on constitutional grounds.

I would have less issue with SES based affirmative action. It seems nuts to me that the sons and daughters of AA senior executives, surgeons and Big Law partners get a "URM" preference in college admissions. (President Obama said as much in 2008, when he said kids like his shouldn't get affirmative action.) If affirmative action were SES based, it would still pull in a large number of racial minority students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Given Kennedy’s legal stance, affirmative-action policies at selective colleges are very vulnerable. Universities generally don’t use race as a last resort, and they weigh it very heavily in admissions decisions. Rather than reaching out to economically disadvantaged students of all races, today’s affirmative-action policies explicitly look at race and tend to advantage fairly well-off African American and Latino students to sit alongside their well-off white and Asian peers.

In the early days, affirmative action properly helped the young Sonia Sotomayor, who grew up in public housing, and the young Michelle Obama, whose parents did not go to college. But over time, the programs morphed into something very different. By the 1990s, one study found that 86 percent of African American students on selective campuses were middle or upper class, and the white students were even richer.

Underrepresented minority students receive a 28-percentage-point increase in their chances of being admitted, according to one careful analysis. By contrast, the study found low-income students receive no boost whatsoever. "

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/12/class-based-affirmative-action/419307/

This is a lazy, low-risk strategy on the part of colleges and universities and their admissions offices. They preferentially admit students of color who are at least upper middle class, if not upper class, have gone to elite secondary schools, etc. Then the grandly tout their "diversity" which is barely skin deep, all the while avoiding taking chances on and making investments in less-advantaged students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The average black student gets admission to the University of Texas with a score hundreds of points lower than white or Asian students.

Then upon entering the University of Texas, they often flounder. The graduation rate for UT as a whole is 78%, but for black students it is about 60%. And undoubtedly, the black students that do graduate do so with lower grades. Given either the lack of graduation or graduating with poor grades, these black students then face an uncertain career.

How is this good for anybody?

Mostly, we do just fine in our careers, given the same access to opportunities that others have (still not a given). I was an "Affirmative Action" baby at a top private university. Though I graduated at the top of my mostly Black high school class and had the 2nd highest SAT score in that class, I was about 120 points below the average SAT of my university. Even though the acceptance rates then (20 plus years ago) weren't as nearly as absurd as they are now, I surely got in with an AA boost (and probably got "points" for coming from my geographical region). My high school science background was woefully inadequate; I had not read novels in my English classes, I had not written research papers; I had not traveled to Europe like a lot of my peers; my father's friends and associates didn't represent an array of professions for me to aspire to or learn about... and none were wealthy. I struggled for sure and nearly flunked out. But slowly, with SUPPORT systems (from curiously enough, a number of white female professors), I did graduate in a field that I was interested in and afforded me some post-graduate options I might not have otherwise had. For sure I sometimes agonize had a I gone to a "slower paced" school that I might have been better positioned to get into a top graduate program (which I wasn't able to do with my record. Contrary to the notions, AA is not just opening the floodgates wide open). And maybe I could have been positioned for more lucrative positions earlier in my career. But in the end the experience was good for me in a couple of ways. 1). The mystery of supposed white (or Asian) supremacy was revealed. I saw what it took to compete in the highest of environments. 2) I got exposed to like-minded students of all races who had struggles similar to my own. 3) I discovered career and life options that I never knew existed. When I entered the work world, I realized, frankly, how largely mediocre the world is at large (and frankly, how mediocre white men still had the advantage over me, no matter where they went to school or if they went to school at all). I was and am a confident and fearless professional in part because I was thrown into the fire. What we don't get sometimes, is how such a meager allowance to right past wrongs causes so much rancor amongst detractors.