Reply to SCOTUS outlaws race as college admissions factor

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[quote=Anonymous]I haven't read the entire thread so if someone else has made this point,my apologies.

I used to support affirmative action for African-Americans. I am using that term deliberately because I supported it for Black people who were descended from slaves, whose parents and grandparents suffered through the era of Jim Crow laws in the South, who lost their jobs in the Depression so white people could have them, who went to substandard schools, were forced to ride in the back of the bus, served in the Second World War, but didn't get the GI Bill to go to college, etc. IOW, those whose families had suffered from systemic racism in the US.

But, anyone who isn't totally oblivious and who attends an Ivy knows that the majority of Black students don't come from that background. Their parents are immigrants from the West Indies and Africa who came here voluntarily. Skip Gates, a Black Harvard professor has been quoted as follows:

"That same year Professor Gates, speaking at a public forum at Princeton University, stated his belief that 75 percent of the black students at Harvard were of African or Caribbean descent or of mixed race."

"A 2004 survey of black students at 28 selective colleges and universities conducted by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University found that 41 percent of all black students at these 28 campuses identified themselves as immigrants or children of immigrants. Only 9 percent of the total black population in the United States can be classified as immigrants or children of immigrants.

For further info see https://www.jbhe.com/news_views/52_harvard-blackstudents.html

Amy Chua's book about the six most successful groups among recent immigrants includes Nigerians. And part of the reason they are doing so well is because they benefit from affirmative action.

Why on earth should a Nigerian kid who came to the US as a child, speaking English, often with 2 college-educated parents--Nigerians are particularly common in medical professions--be admitted to an Ivy over a kid who came here from mainland China , speaking only Mandarin or some other Chinese dialiect, with 2 parents who work in a  restaurant in Chinatown and who have limited English skills? That's what's been happening. And I just cannot defend that.

If we had affirmative action which was limited to the descendants of those who were enslaved in the US, I'd support it. But basing affirmative action solely on the color of your skin, so that recent immigrants from Africa and the Carribean and their children benefit isn't fair. More importantly, it isn't solving the problems of the poor descendants of US slaves who have born the brunt of systemic racism.

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