"Affirmative Action" applied in College grading

[neoolong]

Isnt satire wonderful....unfortunately, often people seem to need a "Satire Inside" label....anyway....

AA is a remarkably retarded way of doing things.....Equal Oppertunities my ass, if it did what it said on the tin that'd be great, but it doesnt.....cure the disease rather than treating symptoms (badly at that) and things will be better.

Actually there pretty much was one. It just wasn't quoted.

[Keevan_Colton]

Actually there pretty much was one. It just wasn't quoted.

My point exactly, even without the label it's pretty clear....but it seems people need it....though that might just be a problem of how scarily close reality is getting to the insanity of good satire.....

[SyntaxVorlon]

Isnt satire wonderful....unfortunately, often people seem to need a "Satire Inside" label....anyway....

AA is a remarkably retarded way of doing things.....Equal Oppertunities my ass, if it did what it said on the tin that'd be great, but it doesnt.....cure the disease rather than treating symptoms (badly at that) and things will be better.

AA isn't about getting rid of racism, it's about supporting upward movement in minority communities toward the middleclass and beyond.
There was a split in the civil rights movement in the twenties between the Du Bois and BT Washington methods for gaining equality.
It's too late for me to remember the particulars. Though I believe it's the BTW method that is being followed.

Of course if you have a better way to get money moving towards the African American community and making it so that the Black community will be proportionally as wealthy as the white community, I'm sure they'd like to hear it.

[Gil Hamilton]

Ah, satire is a wonderful thing.

[The_Nice_Guy]

AA isn't about getting rid of racism, it's about supporting upward movement in minority communities toward the middleclass and beyond.
There was a split in the civil rights movement in the twenties between the Du Bois and BT Washington methods for gaining equality.
It's too late for me to remember the particulars. Though I believe it's the BTW method that is being followed.

It's reverse racism. Or is it that asians and whites somehow don't count when they are being discriminated against?

Of course if you have a better way to get money moving towards the African American community and making it so that the Black community will be proportionally as wealthy as the white community, I'm sure they'd like to hear it.

The black community has to fight for equal opportunities and better teaching methods at the basic, inner city levels, where too many black and hispanic(and some white) children receive substandard education. Decrease the power of the teacher unions there.

Also, they have to get rid of the victim mentality that I personally perceive, instead of crying for reparations and the like. Start thinking of solutions from within themselves, instead of blaming their problems on others all the time.

[BT]Phalanx, how did Asians get over the discrimination in the US? What did they do, in your opinion, that allowed them to climb up the social ladder?

The Nice Guy

[Darth Wong]

It's reverse racism. Or is it that asians and whites somehow don't count when they are being discriminated against?

Of course it's reverse racism. Reverse racism applied to a situation of pre-existing racism is designed to have a cancellation effect. In a situation without pre-existing racism, it would simply create racism. That's why one's evaluation of AA depends on whether one perceives racism in the system.

Also, they have to get rid of the victim mentality that I personally perceive, instead of crying for reparations and the like. Start thinking of solutions from within themselves, instead of blaming their problems on others all the time.

Racial separatism and anti-establishment social attitudes being widely disseminated through popular culture are the primary problem. Blacks are conditioned from a young age to perceive themselves in a certain way, which happens to be a very negative way that will hamper academic and business performance.

[BT]Phalanx, how did Asians get over the discrimination in the US? What did they do, in your opinion, that allowed them to climb up the social ladder?

They didn't. Asians get lots of grunt-work jobs, but statistically speaking, we hit a glass ceiling in white-owned businesses. It's not as bad as the situation with whites and blacks, but Asians do face discrimination.

[Peregrin Toker]

Isn't that kind of a roundabout way of going about it? I don't agree with AA in any form, but if you have it, wouldn't basing it on yearly income of parents instead of race make a better system? After all, these problems are supposed to stem from the bad schools that poor kids have to go to, instead of biological limits that race-based AA seems to imply.

This sounds like a good idea - but it just seems like socialism to me, and after reading about how Lenin turned evil into an ideal on itself, I've been a little skeptical towards that ideology.

[The Dark]

Affirmative Action(for minorities) exists to counterbalance racial intolerance and strengthen the minority communities that for a great while held blacks and other minorities out of higher levels of professions.
AA also got a good number of politicians into school, as some of their fathers went to the same school. They get points on that.

I'll agree the "good ol' boy" network allowed a lot of politicians to go to the colleges they did. Dubya was about 150 points below the average Yale attendee on the SAT.

Whites have a much higher mean income, this means the white children typically are given a better more intensive education from the get go.

Why not do it based on income instead of race? The majority of AA-based minority contracts go to people with a net worth of over a million dollars. That's not exactly helping the poor. In fact, the majority of people below the poverty line are white. Numbers can be used to argue either direction.

The fact that a good number of the college educated white men in america today got their positions through frat networking is also tilts the balance.

*shrug* So why doesn't Kappa Alpha Psi, the national African-American fraternity, have such a large influence? They are (AFAIK) the only racially discrimnatory fraternity in the nation, so to argue that line opens the floodgates to the fact that more fraternities are open to African-Americans than to any other ethnicity.

AA is opportunity management. Making minorities equals in the professional world is the goal.

Yet it's merely creating more of a discrepancy between the rich and poor, by giving money to those with high net worths (re: business contracts to millionaires). It would make far more sense to increase funding to inner-city schools, the ones that have children that need more help. AA doesn't work as it's supposed to. California and Texas both increased minority enrollment at college after they eliminated AA. The minority students aren't going to the high-level colleges (where AA recipients had a near 100% drop-out rate), but they are getting college educations, which will cause them and their children to be more appreciative of education. This isn't something that can be cured in a short period of time; attitudes about education require generations to alter. the "quick fix" of affirmative action will, in time, make things worse if applied solely on the basis of race, rather than on the family income that affects all aspects of education. The average score on the SAT is found to increase by 30 points for every $10,000 of family income. The MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System) has been found to have only ONE factor altering its score: family income. Class size, race, ethnicity, gender, and even length of time using English had ZERO effect on the test score.

This is also the aim of those who are trying to get the Augusta Golf Club to admit women, because it is a networking hub for american business. Everybody who is a major player in business in the US is a member their, unless they are a woman.

That I have no problem with. Organizations that omit certain portions of society shouldn't be allowed if there is not a significant physical reason why it should be so. The Citadel case I disagreed with, though, because there was a campus for women at the same place, and AFAIK the two schools essentially had different names and physical programs tailored for the biological differences between men and women. As long as there is no physical reason for separation, however, I feel there should not be any.

[The_Nice_Guy]

Income based entrance bonuses? Could work, could work. Not a bad idea at all.

Of course, if they could institute equal education(such as it is, if it was possible) and standardized tests at primary levels, and provide bursaries, subsidies, and the like for kids with potential, there might not even be a need for AA at the college level at all.

The Nice Guy

[The Dark]

Income based entrance bonuses? Could work, could work. Not a bad idea at all.

Of course, if they could institute equal education(such as it is, if it was possible) and standardized tests at primary levels, and provide bursaries, subsidies, and the like for kids with potential, there might not even be a need for AA at the college level at all.

The Nice Guy

That's my ultimate hope, but right now I don't think going that far is implementable. People just don't seem to adjust to social change that well. Most of the time it takes a relatively slow, gradual change. The other thing that needs to be done is an increase in the overall quality of education staff. While there are individual teachers who excel, by and large I find that a significant number of public school teachers are barely above their students' level, if they are even that high. I've had physics, biology, mathematics, and history teachers I knew more than about their own subjects.

[Shadow WarChief]

AA isn't about getting rid of racism, it's about supporting upward movement in minority communities toward the middleclass and beyond.

So? In either definition in use, AA takes the unqualified and treats them equally, or more often than not, better than the ones who were qualified in the first place.

Of course if you have a better way to get money moving towards the African American community and making it so that the Black community will be proportionally as wealthy as the white community, I'm sure they'd like to hear it.

And you're in a rush to give money to people who didn't earn it why?

[Gandalf]

Quality article, methinks.

Though it was disturblingly authentic looking.

[Stormbringer]

Racial separatism and anti-establishment social attitudes being widely disseminated through popular culture are the primary problem. Blacks are conditioned from a young age to perceive themselves in a certain way, which happens to be a very negative way that will hamper academic and business performance.

So why do we have to use taxpayer money to erase a self created notion? Blacks and Hispanics have achieved little compared to other minorities that started out in the same position.

I say give scholarships based on need and qualifications and screw race. If they want to get out of the ghetto they need to work for it, not have it handed to them.