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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Affirmative action cannot continue indefinitely. Considering that blacks were getting preferential treatment in the 1970s, we are now on the third generation getting into college with standards lowered to allow it. Jews and Asians immigrated here, and even among the poor, uneducated ones, their kids went to college on their own merits. How many more generations is this supposed to last?

I support color-blind, income-based affirmative action. Let's give all bright poor kids a chance, regardless of race.[/quote]

I wonder if you're aware of the way you've contradicted yourself.  Affirmative Action has failed for black people, according to you, but you support it for all poor kids "regardless of race."

I'm black, living a nice life, and support the continuation of Affirmative Action.  I also happen to think there's a very strong case to be made for opening it up on the basis of income and other hurdles, and believe pretty strongly that the race-based frame of AA impedes that objective.

It's circular arguments like the PP's above and about a hundred other posts here that rely on the idea that black students are inferior and don't deserve access to the higher echelons of higher education - that's what's kinda killing the idea of opening it up to "all bright poor kids, regardless of race."

People are going to believe what they want, and I could not care less about the opinions of people who believe such tripe.  But in the interest of making the case for income-based affirmative action that opens the door for low-income whites, let's put stereotypes aside for a bit and start looking at facts.

The fact is, there are more poor whites than any other demographic in the U.S.  Not only is there not a lot of actionable discussion about what can change that, we're pretty vehement these days about stigmatizing that group as hopeless victims of their own poor decision-making.  Let's put that aside for moment, too.

The race-based argument for and against affirmative action makes the same two mistakes that many college-bound freshmen - regardless of race - tend to make: 1) believing that admission is the ultimate objective, which leads to 2) not considering all the other factors that are necessary for success.

I think that was the most important lesson in JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy.  Everyone needs a push from behind (he had his grandmother, sister and aunt), but they also need someone - more like several someones - pulling them forward and guiding them each step of the way.  He always had someone giving him a chance (sometimes more than one), giving him advice, pointing out his options, showing him what to do.  One of the biggest factors in what educators call "summer melt" - that is, the confounding problem of kids who get the grades and the test scores to get into college but then never show up - is filling out forms and turning them in on time.

If we're going to have more kids making it out of poverty, we need more formerly poor people in strong positions to do that pulling and guiding - because they're the only ones who fully understand the obstacles.  That means poor people of all kinds of backgrounds, overcoming all kinds of obstacles, making it to higher ground.

Put your objective beyond admissions to HYP and think about better outcomes - a variety of outcomes because there's a wide variety of people.  And if more of them don't have better outcomes, the rest of us are going to get dragged down.

I mean, it's already started.  Take a closer look at who's doing the dragging.  It doesn't matter how well my black kid succeeds at life.  We don't have a future workforce that can sustain the country I'm raising him in.[/quote]

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