Reply to New study on relative impact of Harvard Admissions Preferences

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Go look at table 11 on page 49. I guess there is one admissions preference the authors don't want to talk about.

http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/legacyathlete.pdf[/quote]

I’m usually a supporter of affirmative action but if this analysis is true it’s pretty damning. Half of Hispanic Harvard students and 2/3 of Harvard African American students wouldn’t have been admitted without racial preferences? Those numbers are high. People definitely find it offensive to be told “you wouldn’t be here without affirmative action, but these numbers say that is true much of the time.
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Does it bother you that plenty of whites wouldn’t get in if they weren’t legacies or athletes?[/quote]

Not at all. If you disallow all of the preferences, the number for whites don't change much.  It might be different white kids, but there's nothing wrong with that. [/quote]

I’m white. I feel really sad when I hear Asian Americans concerned about quotas. I think selective chools should figure out how to make extra slots available for Asian American kids, to ease their sense of anxiety about this, and to reflect the reality that Asian Americans just aren’t responsible for the effects of African slavery in America.

I wish there were more affirmative action for poor white kids from places with weak schools.

But I think affirmative action for African American and Hispanic kids at selective schools is generally a good thing.

Going to Harvard or Duke probably isn’t going to help a white, middle or upper income kid who can get in all that more than going to the kid’s state flagship would. That kid will probably have fun and have a good life either way.

If a poor kid or an URM kid gets into a super selective school, with great financial aid, that might lead to a huge gain in that kid’s lifetime income, and that kid’s success might improve the well-being of dozens or hundreds of other kids in that one super successful kid’s community. Cousins, friends and classmates may do better in school because they see the one kid moved up. The school board might be more likely to offer AP classes in that school because they see the school has had at least one great kid.

And I think diversity is critical for the white kids in a college. I went to an elementary school, in a city with a large African American community, that might have had two adopted African American kids in another grade. I was in middle school and high school classes where there was one African American student. I don’t think I ever saw two African American students that I knew talking to each other till I was in college. I think growing up with that kind of segregation is like growing up with a shackled arm, and never learning to move the arm. I’m a nice, moderately liberal person in terms of my politics and in terms of how I want to be, but I’ll always be neurologically racist, because of the lack of diversity in my surroundings when I was growing up.

Students who go to a college where only 5 percent of the students are African American or Hispanic aren’t being prepared to live in the real world. They might know how to design a microchip, but they won’t know anything about life beyond their small, fragile demographic bubble.

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I agree with much of this, and grew up in a similar environment as you as a white child.

I would disagree, though, with one thing: it doesn’t matter if Asian Americans aren’t responsible for the enslavement of African Americans. Neither are any of today’s kids, of any race. The point is that our society as a whole caused the systematic oppression of African Americans, so our society as a whole has to fix it. If you want to benefit from the assets of living in America, you have to also be part of paying its debts.[/quote]

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