Reply to Ivy League Affirmative Action from the inside

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm all in favor of some kind of affirmative action for low SES kids.  That will necessarily pick up a lot of racial minority kids.  But I fail to see why the kid of a successful African-American doctor or lawyer should get an admission preference based on race, when they have had a more advantageous start in life than the first-generation college applicant from a blue collar background in Kentucky who happens to be white.[/quote]This verbatim comment was on College Confidential.  You get around, don't you?  Or is it some people just like to keep shit going.[/quote]

Touchy?  Looks like you don't want to lose your AA privilege.[/quote]

First generation college candidates also get special consideration and, if white, are not likely to be competing against URMs for admission.  So this is a bogus trade-off.  Elite schools can and do admit both kinds of students.

As for why it's legit that the kid of an AA professional may benefit from affirmative action, there are a whole series of considerations/issues you're ignoring.  First, it's not clear who had the more advantageous start in life.  A white boy from rural Kentucky may have had an easier childhood/adolescence than an African American boy from any of a number of U.S. cities.  Racism shapes life chances as much as (and in some cases/at some stages, more than) socio-economic status.  And certainly post-college, to the extent that anyone is aware of his class background, the white kid will be seen as extraordinarily talented for having gotten into/graduated from an elite school, while the African American grad will constantly have to deal with people assuming he didn't really deserve to go -- regardless of his credentials prior to admission.  Secondly, as a society, we're still falling very short of the ideal of creating a culture in which leaders emerge from all kinds of demographics.  That's important both in shaping aspirations and in shaping how power is exercised. [b] To the extent that the goal is creating a diverse elite, it's important not only to admit URM kids from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds, but also to admit kids who have the background to excel[/b].  [/quote]

It's been a while since I've read a statement of such complete horse shit.[/quote]

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