Reply to Ivy League Affirmative Action from the inside

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[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.  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.  [/quote]

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