Reply to Affirmative Action should be income-based, not race-based

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am the OP, and I still fail to see what is racist about my initial proposal - top 5% of every high school in the country, with family incomes under $100,000 (or maybe lower) will be beneficiaries of AA and, to solve the "free college for everyone" impossibility, also qualify for a free ride to the 4-year university in their state. It addresses so many issues at once:

1) Black children from low-income families with uneducated parents, who obviously started life at a disadvantage to the middle class, get an "assist" via AA and free state college IF they are among the top 5% in their high schools. The beauty of this proposal is that we go high school-by-high school, so kids from impoverished, primarily black inner-city schools will compete only against each other, and not the more affluent suburban high school students who, regardless of race, clearly had a running start in life.

2) Granted, this will not help the black child of professional parents earning high salaries (unless she is among the exceptional top 5%). This is fair. Assuming that AA was started to reverse the discrimination toward black students generations earlier - and that the effect of that discrimination has impacted black kids today - affluent black children are not among that group. Their parents, or even grandparents, went to college.

3) On the white side, the children living in poor rural areas OR in the inner-city (since not everyone in the inner-city is black) will also gain. They too have been disadvantaged in life via their poor, uneducated parents - and the top 5% of them, who got top grades and entrance scores despite the hardships, should also benefit from an "assist".

4) Combining academic achievement (the 5%) with low SES (the income requirement) helps the students that a FAIR-MINDED individual would want to help, black, white, or green.

5) To those arguing that this is an attempt to keep blacks "in their place," how so? To the contrary, a low SES hits black families to a much greater degree than white families, and thus this proposal would still see that AA policies disproportionally assist them. Beyond that, the proposal would PAY for their college!

6) Finally, the only black kids this would adversely affect are the ones, who I mentioned, whose parents are educated professionals. These kids have advantages that the poor - white and black - do not have, including access to private tutors if needed and even better caliber private schools.

I still say this proposal is much more fair than the current AA policies. It factors together low SES and academic achievement and still, indirectly, disproportionately provides an assist to blacks. It merely gives poor whites (those who have excelled in high schoo) better access to higher education, which could otherwise be beyond their reach due to financial pressures.

[/quote]

Why does your post sound racist? 
- You are focused on eliminating opportunities/preferences ONLY for blacks. Not other URMs, athletes, legacies, musicians, women, etc.

- Because you [i]could[/i] propose this plan and still keep race as a factor. You want to completely eliminate it as if there still isn't a great amount of underlying racism in our country. We still have huge opportunity/achievement gaps.

[/quote]
I've explained that a gazillion times. Policies based on race are racist, pure and simple, and I am proposing a way we can eliminate need it - while STILL not harming the black kids who are disadvantaged. In fact, my proposal would help them more fully by providing free college. So it doesn't eliminate opportunities for blacks - it increases them. Your problem is that it would have the impact of helping poor whites as well, as you seem determined that only blacks should be helped in that they are somehow more "deserving" than poor whites. Now THAT is racist....making sure any new proposal doesn't help poor whites ("white trash" according to some of your racists).

High-achieving blacks from poor homes will be still advantaged by the new proposed "race-neutral" rules. The only people who will be disadvantaged are the affluent black kids, who obviously do not suffer from opportunity/achievement gaps given the wonderful opportunities provided by their educated parents.

As an aside, I think policies should be religion-neutral as well. It is awful that schools have decided they have enough Jews (or Asians, in the case of race) and close the gate to bright, hard-working Jews or Asians from poor families.

[/quote]

Couldn't agree more.

Only the racists will object.[/quote]

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