Sunday marks the 10 year anniversary of the overturning of Proposition 209 in California. Thursday, here at UCLA students of all colors got together in the morning for a funeral procession for the Death of Diversity. Students dressed in black staged a silent “walk-in” by walking into law classes and standing in silence, in an effort to depict what a classroom should look like if it were representative of the population of CA. There were over 50% minorities enrolled in the law school in 1995, the year before Prop 209 took place, far more than there have been since that year. 
Ten years ago this Sunday, California voters passed Proposition 209, which banned the use of race, ethnicity, color, gender or national origin as a factor in hiring and admissions in public institutions….Since then UCLA has seen a substantial drop in the number of black, Latino, Chicano/a and Native American students who are admitted.Out of the 4,422 students in UCLA’s freshman class of 2006, 100 are black. The low enrollment numbers have incited criticism from the UCLA community as well as national media outlets…Alina Ball [in the UCLA Law School Class of ’08] …found herself to be the only black female student, and one of nine black students total, in her class of more than 300. [daily bruin]
At UCLA, Johnson and other speakers noted that African American, Latino and Native American students continue to be underrepresented at UCLA and other UC campuses, with their numbers at the schools well below their proportions in the state’s population. The numbers plummeted the year after the ban took effect, and although they have recovered since then for the UC system as a whole, they have remained low at its most competitive campuses, including UCLA and UC Berkeley. [la times]
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p>But what does this mean for desis? South Asian Americans were out at the rally in full force, with members of the South Asian Law Student Association (SALSA) and Muslim Student Association (MSA) making an appearance. If the law school were to directly reflect the 1.24% [p.48] South Asian American population that we have in California, that would mean of the 340 law students in the 2008 class, there should be at least 4 desis in the entering class. I’m not sure about the exact stats, but I believe last year’s class had 13 South Asians. To further complicate the matter in trying to get stats on how many South Asian Americans are in the UC system, as far as categorization in the UC system is concerned, ‘Pakistani’ and ‘East Indian’ are lumped in with ‘Other.’
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p>Last month, the satirical article written by Jed Levine at the UCLA Bruin caused some ruckus in the Asian American blogosphere…His main gripe? There are too many Asian Americans on UCLA’s campus and their numbers on campus should be limited to make room for other ethnicities…
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Yes, white people are an underrepresented minority here at UCLA; while they make up 44 percent of the California population, white students only constitute 34 percent of UCLA’s student population….Asian-Americans, on the other hand, make up only 12 percent of the state of California and 38 percent of UCLA students.I agree with the chair of MEChA that the UC Regents are using unfair means to admit UC students. Using grades and test scores as a measure of academic success is clearly just a way to show preference to Asian-American students, who are better at both, and thus promote the status quo.
By keeping the Asian-American student numbers under control and more accurate to their representation in California, we can free up 26 percent of the student body for members of underrepresented groups.
I hear some liberal arts colleges accept head shots from applicants, and I think a similar program at UCLA would be monumentally successful at helping us weed out the young Maos and Kim Jongs from potential Mandelas, Lincolns and Estefans. [daily bruin]
Sadly, this opinion of Asian Americans taking the seats of other underrepresented groups is not just Levine’s, but one heard in the murmurs at yesterday’s rally from some Latinas standing in the crowd behind me. I was offended at first — weren’t we here at the rally standing in solidarity together as a people of color fighting for equity? Was this just an issue to pit Blacks and Latinos against the Asians and South Asians? But in retrospect I had to question — Do desis even care about affirmative action? Though we had turned out it great numbers at the rally yesterday, I couldn’t help but wonder: if we as Asian American are currently being overly represented in the UC system, then does the reversal of proposition 209 even matter to us, or even worse, will it be detrimental to our enrollment? Is this an issue that needs to have South Asian American representation?
One thing that really irks me about the AA debate among progressives is that it’s often presented as a “you’re either for it or against it” discussion. If people are committed to removing social barriers to education, the question should not be: “are you for or against AA?” The question should be: “Does AA maximize equality in access to education? If not, what would?”
Personally, if I had to choose between AA or no AA, I guess I would choose AA. That being said, however, if I could choose between heavily investing in the improvement of urban schools (such as reducing class sizes, building new schools, reducing the teacher shortage, and hiring smarter principals) and AA, I would obviously choose the former. I think AA is just an easy band-aid that does little to address the roots of social inequalities. But for now, unfortunately, it seems like that’s the only option we have available.
Its cool, I should have been clearer. And for the record, there’s nothing wrong with having students who study through the night on weekends. I am home most weekends myself… but that can’t be everybody. I absolutely love having a variety of everything from race to culture to SES… I’ve been in situations where everyone is largely the same and I find myself learning little and extremely bored.
^IAWTC
That’s true for both sides. By once being a ballot measure (yes or no vote), such framing is to be expected.
if your in California, a lot of blame falls squarely on prop 13 and the ‘low taxes at all costs’ junta.
Affirmative action and other issues should be looked at from the point of view of if it helps your community or hurts it. I believe that affirmative actions hurts certain segments of SA population. SA population is very diverse with very many different experience depending on many factors. We are over represented in medical field… but also in taxi drivers, liquor store clerks etc. So lumping S ASIANs as one group hurts a significant number of our brothern/sistern? who don’t have the same back ground/advantages as a typical doctors child. I hope our political leaders(if there are any) stand firmly against Affirmative action.
Kumar Barve puts it best: Affirmative action is an important issue not because I am brown, but because I am American. Given the low,low, low levels of Indian-Americans and other South Asians in this county, our view of whether it helps or hurts us is like asking if it helps or hurts Armenian-Americans or Persian-Americans. The reason we want affirmitive action is because we know there are too many white people at the top schools and jobs, and that having a litle color there won’t hurt. Or, if you are opposed to that, then it your view of what America should look like that plays a role.
Thear some liberal arts colleges accept head shots from applicants…
WTF!? What do looks have to do w/ aptitude/brain power? As for the overrep of minorities…
I once had the misfortune to be in a class w/ 2 Cali freshmen guys (rich/white/whiny), who complained that they had to come to “crappy” ASU instead of go to “awesome” local school, UC Irvine. One referred to it as “Univeristy of Chinese Immigrants”- I’m NOT kidding! I was embarrassed, but later figured that these two lacked the brain to compete against those going into UC Irvine, and were using the Asian FOBc and Asian-Americans as scapegoats. As my dad says, everyone has to COMPETE in this world!
everyone has to COMPETE in this world! And don’t hate if you are not good enough to compete!
As a privileged white male I’m sure that I benefited from some intrinsic benefits. I do not oppose affirmative action provided whomever it benefits is reasonably qualified. Likewise quotas do not bother me as long as it’s not some large percentage 25% or 50%. Everyone opposed to AA seems to think that the spots reserved for this minority or that minority will be given to someone grossly incompetent.
If you’re a white guy just worry about being qualified and better than the other white guys applying. Unfortunately the real world is as much as about who you know as it is about what you know. It’s not fair that someone gets a job simply because she or he (note the non-misoginistic use of both gender pronouns) because she or he went to the same school as the person in charge of hiring but that’s life.
I’m sure glad I live in Texas where we’ve got this whole gender, immigrant, minority equality thing figured out…..
From Jed Levine in response to my friend Lu Lu:
Lu Lu, should any racists on campus try to cite this article as a justification for anything, it will simply prove how stupid they really are. This article is a SATIRE (not a joke, not an honest proposition) on affirmative action and is making fun of people who would believe such absurd things about Asians. It would be like someone citing Jonathan Swifts “A Modest Proposal” as justification for eating children: Just plain dumb.
I agree with you that having minority groups fight amongst themselves is terrible. That’s why this article was written. I took affirmative action to it’s most extreme conclusion. Affirmative action would help black and Latino students at the expense of Asian students and that would be a terrible thing. People deserve to get into UCLA based on relevant criteria. If we want to fix this lack of diversity we need to focus on the root of the problem, not its most superficial symptom.
This article is not “putting down” Asians, but rather creating an absurd voice (me) that is proposing this god-awful idea to illustrate the fallacy of affirmative action. Nothing in this article is to be taken at face value, the backwards logic, sarcastic tone, and absolute absurdity combine to make it a clever and pertinent satire. If you read this and realize that my proposal and logic is completely false, why would you give credit to the poorly-written race-baiting?
Please don’t advocate people clogging up the e-mail boxes of “every editor” at the Bruin. Sending your comments to the viewpoint editor and/or the editor in chief should be enough to get your point across. That being said, they gave their approval of this column before we went to print and have continued to support it unconditionally.
Regards, Jed
The irony. Members of the race that enslaved blacks are benefitting from a progam orginally designed to counter the legacy of slavery. With all this talk of diversity, whatever happened to the shackled runner metaphor?
There is no irony in this – any government program designed to aid the disadvantaged benefits two groups – the middle class and the very well off minority of the disadvantaged group. It’s a matter of numbers – if you want to win re-election, you have to make sure that programs and benefits accrue to the largest number of people. So, since AA is no loner about redressing Jim Crow discrimination, but it is now about “diversity”, a white girl who grew up in the suburbs is just as valuable as a black girl from the projects.
The “gender split” in AA which is most visible among black students, will probably soon appear among South Asians. My sister, when applying to grad schools for chemistry, was worried that she may not cut it. I re-assured her that since she was a woman in an overwhlemingly male field, and that the few women in it are foreign-born grad students, she shouldn’t worry so much. Plus, being Indian, the admissions board may feel it is their responsibility to redress several thousand years of oppressive Indian culture – what with the dowry burings, sati, and the like. A friend of mine, a woman of SE Asian descent, managed to get into Northwestern’s MBA program, despite an ordinary undergrad GPA from U of Chicago, avg. GMAT scores, and a couple years of marketing under her belt. Had she been a SE Asian man, I’m not so sure she would have gotten in.
Razib raises a good point – for those of us brown folk who had very good, but not stellar, credentials, AA will be a net loss.
Why is there no affirmative action in NFL / NBA? A lot more colour and diversity in the top sport events would be fun. When rich black sports stars talk about AA in the top sports then I ll accept that
I have a few questions:
I have limited athletic/musical ability and come from a background with almost zero support of sport/music. Should I not get preferential treatment in the sports / musical arenas. If I understand correctly, in sport and music it is just merit that matters. eg. The ability to kick a ball / run fast/ sing / dance (your skin colour is immaterial). There are billions of dollars available in sport and music. Hey, why should those with limited ability be excluded? Since we are talking about % representation let us distribute the medals at the Olympics using population !!!
Having a clear and open test enables those from a less privileged background to compete. This “well rounded” candidate theory does eliminate the truly marginalized. Let me explain: If it is just SAT then you know what you need to do and you can focus on that. You can then decide if it is worth spending 1000 dollars to improve your score. If it is not just SAT but also other criteria, then a marginalized candidate needs to spread their resources to meet other criteria. Yet, this may not be enough. How about ignoring high school. Just the outcome of one test (SAT). Will that help or disadvantage the marginalized ?
Do the children of Black CEO’s claim AA? How about publishing the list of AA candidates.
“Alumni” factor in admissions. Why is this not an issue that agitates the liberal minded. This is nepotism at its worst.
just one thing
YAY Kumar Barve! That is how you get around minorities fighting minorities
What really irks me about some of the “Death of Diversity” participants is their idea that Asian Americans are not “authentic” minorities and have somehow struggled less than they have (hierarchy of oppression). I hate how my experiences are somehow less relevant b/c they do not fit the appropriate historical context. A hijab-wearing Muslim girl growing up in a farming community in the Midwest should be given AA just for that.
Second, why should state demographics determine public university enrollment? I find Taz’s very literal number crunching a bit unsettling. Then again, government jobs do tend to overrepresent the state’s dunce population quite well…
Last, progressive coalition building is a two-way street. If blacks/Latinos/Native Americans want sympathy for their cause, the need to recognize the struggles of other racial/religious minorities as well. The deafening silence on the Muslim issue, for example, is astonishing. (Yes, I know there are black Muslims, but not very vocal ones at UCLA.)
haroun, integrating the misery function from t = initiation to t = present, i think native americans and blacks have a “leg up” on other minority groups in cummulative misery.
re: genetics = wormz. elegans baby.
Razib-
Thanks for the response. But it’s a bit sloppy to think that misery can be quantified. How do you posit Hispanics into the equations?
Re genetics, I’m a geneticist….are you a researcher? Just curious as to where in the field you’re coming from…thx
AA should be pared down and applied in a limited form. For eligibility, the candidate must demonstrate : – that s/he is a direct descendant of a US slave or somebody oppressed under US segregation. Descendants of Jamaican slaves, Mexican slaves etc. should not be eligible. They should seek redressal from the respective states (Britain, Mexico etc.) that oppressed them. A foreigner from Africa should not be eligible. Neither should Latinos. I know that this kind of perpetuates the “one drop” rule, but I don’t know how the eligibility can be diluted for multiracial people. – OR that s/he is a direct descendant of a Native American who lived in the US since the USA was constituted. – AND that his/her household per capita income is less than median US (or median + 25%) – The program must end in 2020 (or some appropriate date) and can only be extendable by super majority votes in both houses of Congress.
The current diversity based AA programs are BS and must be scrapped.
As for “legacy” programs, they can be justified if the univs can demonstrate that the returns from alumni contributions make up for the “cost” of sub par admittees.
A varsity athlete with a 3.9 and 1450 SAT is marginal? On what planet?
Thanks for the response. But it’s a bit sloppy to think that misery can be quantified. How do you posit Hispanics into the equations?
i don’t. if you are going to think in terms of groups though, i think native americans and blacks have pride of place in the american misery index. new immigrant groups, less.
but then, i’m not one who thinks that the miseries, sins and glories of ancestors are passed down through the generations. i only pointed out if you accept the premise of past misery being justification of current redress, i think black americans with their history of slavery, and native americans with their history of dispossession have strong cases.
Re genetics, I’m a geneticist….are you a researcher? Just curious as to where in the field you’re coming from…thx
not actively right now. i have an interest in evolutionary popuation genetics, and especially epistatic genetic variance. i worked with c., but not elegans 🙂
A varsity athlete with a 3.9 and 1450 SAT is marginal? On what planet?
on the planet where you have slanty eyes and a feren last name 🙂 and where you apply to an elite school, of course.
I am all for Affirmative Action. I think there is not enough AA. Hell, they should amend the constitution or somethin.
Look around – How many South Asians are there in NBA/NFL/MLB? Hell what about colelge athletics? Just imagine the possibilities.
I have a dream. I have a dream when Peyton Manning and Reggie Bush and Muthukrishnan Srigopalaradhakrishnan will all play together(with the font on their jerseys changed to fit us desis ofcourse). I have a dream that people will be judged not by the height of their bodies or by how far they can throw a ball, but by their character.
Amen.
All this discussion of the overrepresentation of Asian Americans in higher and continuing education is 100% misleading and false. Additionally, it completely fails to disentangle a very diverse population composed of people from over 50 countries and from different backgrounds (e.g. immigrant, naturalized, 2nd gen, 5th gen, etc.). If you throw in socioeconomic standing, region of origin, ethnicity, English-language familiarity, etc., then there are a lot of people left out. There was a lot of really great education done around this a few years ago when UC Regent John Moores wrote that affirmative action hurts Asians. We have to ask ourselves what is this population, and is it reflective? At Cal when I graduated, 50% of the API-A community in undergrad was Chinese-American while Filipinos (the second largest Asian-American group in CA) were less than 10% and non-Vietnamese southeast Asians (who are also particularly concentrated in CA) were less than 1% of the undergrad population. And we can’t even talk about Pacific Islanders – I think there were 50 (out of 25,000 undergrads). When you take it to the underrepresentation of Black and Latino students it is similarly horrific. It’s important to really think about who is represented in the “Asian” label, and who is included in these monolithic “under” and “over” represented labels, which frankly, are a bit ridiculous.
And it is not surprising that other underrepresented students buy into Levine’s satiric argument. I mean, how many people posting here buy into it? A lot. It just reinforces and strengthens the model minority myth, but it also divides people of color communities. It makes it easier to associate “Asians” as being “white” as oppposed to finding links of common struggle. It is also entirely unstrategic, but when so many people buy into it, it takes a lot of awareness and information distribution to even begin to present an alternative model/vision/interpretation.
Further still, all this conversation over who “loses seats” when you move towards a more equitable higher education model and population is a bunch of hooey. It relies on an attitude of entitlement and merit that people buy into whereby they assume that someone else is taking something they deserve. Everyone deserves education and educational access. If it means giving up a bit of privilege, then that’s what has to be done.
Further, Asian Americans just “appear” overrepresented. When you look at their enrollment across colleges, particularly outside of the “top 20,” their enrollment rates are NOT high. I will have to pull my cites for this one, but API-A’s are something like 4% of the total U.S. population and do not make up 4% of the total college population.
At the “higher higher education” level (i.e. grad and professional school) their rates are even lower, particularly in “non traditional” fields and certainly in administration or areas of promotion/management. Also, I think it is worth taking into account that part of the reason there are so many desi doctors and engineers is largely due to the U.S.’s restrictive immigration requirements after the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act. This is not some kind of inherent desi/API expertise, or whatnot, it is social engineering through immigration legislation/policy.
And finally, there are of course desis involved in the affirmative action debate on both sides. While I think the number of desis who are politically active and who would associate as social justice activists is already relatively low, historically (and currently) desis have absolutely been involved in racial justice issues in the U.S. And, if you come up to the Bay Area, they are absolutely present in the current discussion, education, and mobilization around Prop. 209.
i’m not one who thinks that the miseries, sins and glories of ancestors are passed down through the generations.
My boy T, is Tibetan, born in South India, raised in a Tibetan refugee camp near Varanasi, worked in Kathmandu until six years ago when he married a Virginia woman. Anyway, he says the first thing about Americans that annoyed him was how every group here thinks they have the monopoly on suffering.
I tend to agree, and would add that I’m starting to see in my students an alarming sense of entitlement. Many think they’re going to college on a ‘scholarship’ with a 2.0 GPA and no extracirriculars plus behavioral problems. Some don’t even realize they must apply for these things. They get pissed when I tell them that they have to be a part of the application process because it involves more work.
I don’t understand why sports are considered this bastion of black achievement sans AA when their are so few black people representing in the higher ranks of athletics. People who use the sports analogy consistently prove me right about how they don’t know. There is a severe abscence of black coaches in the NFL because people have learned to assume that black people are absolutely incapable of doing anything besides follow other people’s orders.
The rare occurrence (of having one team with a black coach play against another with a black coach) is a milestone of sorts for a league that in 2002 was pushed into creating a rule to make sure minority coaching candidates would get a fair chance to be hired as NFL head coaches.
And besides that, athletic ability is not going to help when finding solutions for diseases that disproportionally affect black people (sickle cell for one), and athletic ability isn’t going to help black people turn over laws that are biased against the black community. I’m annoyed that so many people think that their community suffers because they don’t have a lot of atheletes to cheer for.
What sport are we talking about? A lot of the male varsity athletes I know who are asian play sports like tennis and volleyball… which is great but not really the type of athelete most schools want. But asian football/hockey/basketball players are not marginalized to the extent you seem to think. Or maybe it’s just my school where I run into these HUGE asian football players.
This is partially the current generations of black people’s fault. We go on and on about slavery but don’t harp on the fact that the generation that lived through the Civil Rights Movement is still around. And we also don’t point out that even since the CRM there are still a lot of issues that keep black people at a disadvantage:
For applicants whose annual incomes were less than 80% of the median income in a given metropolitan statistical area (MSA), the rejection rates for conventional mortgages were: blacks, 40.1%; Hispanics, 31.1%; whites, 23.1%, and Asians, 17.2%. When applicants’ incomes were in the 100% to 120% range of the MSA median, rejection rates were: blacks, 26.3%; Hispanics, 19.1%; whites, 11.2%; and Asians, 12.6%. Surprisingly, even when blacks’ incomes were well above average (more than 120% of the MSA median), they still had the highest rejection rate: blacks, 21.4%; Hispanics, 15.8%; whites, 8.5%; and Asians, 11.2%.(link)
“We had to fight to get our kids into honors classes at Skyline High School .‚.‚. in liberal, progressive Oakland. It was shocking.” … Clarence and Wandra cq STYL not found Boyd of Oakland remember when they got Jared’s 1994 class schedule for his first year at Skyline. “She exploded,” Boyd said, pointing to his wife. “Here we had this black kid, with a GPA of 3.83. Despite the fact that both his parents requested honors courses, despite the fact that his counselor at junior high recommended it, he did not get one advanced course.” (Link)
They may think that, but it most assuredly won’t work out for them. It’s not like black students have carte blanche in selecting any school. Even the best of us get rejected from a variety of top schools. I know I did.
Anyway, I get so confused. On the one hand there are so many people who say people in the black community don’t value education and they don’t try to rise up… bootstraps! bootstraps! But then when you have black students trying to do well for themselves, trying to stay off the streets, trying to help their communities… then everyone wants to get mad because they might have to work a little harder to secure a spot at a university. People need to make up their minds.
Further, Asian Americans just “appear” overrepresented. When you look at their enrollment across colleges, particularly outside of the “top 20,” their enrollment rates are NOT high. I will have to pull my cites for this one, but API-A’s are something like 4% of the total U.S. population and do not make up 4% of the total college population.
i suspect you’ll have to get that cite out of your ass 🙂 (clean it please) here is info that took me 2.5 seconds to find via something called google at a site associated with something called the US census:
Asians had the highest proportion with a bachelorÂ’s degree or higher (49.4 percent), followed by Non-Hispanic whites (30.6 percent), African-Americans (17.6 percent) and Hispanics (12.1 percent).
if asian americans are less than their proportion in the college age population, that would have to be (assuming you are correct) because they have low birthrates and fewer college age individuals.
A lot of the male varsity athletes I know who are asian play sports like tennis and volleyball… which is great but not really the type of athelete most schools want.
fyi, the argument in golden’s book is that sports like this are actually important as it allows an easy way for wealthy kids into schools who have sub-par academics. i agree that the focus on sports is kind of dumb, it isn’t like many people are becoming professional athletes, or even getting full athletic scholarships.
But then when you have black students trying to do well for themselves, trying to stay off the streets, trying to help their communities… then everyone wants to get mad because they might have to work a little harder to secure a spot at a university. People need to make up their minds.
it depends on how you define “little harder.” asian american students perceive that their credentials need to be better than those of whites, and far better than those of blacks and hispanics.
Anyway, I get so confused. On the one hand there are so many people who say people in the black community don’t value education and they don’t try to rise up… bootstraps! bootstraps! But then when you have black students trying to do well for themselves, trying to stay off the streets, trying to help their communities… then everyone wants to get mad because they might have to work a little harder to secure a spot at a university. People need to make up their minds.
also, on this issue, there is a strong perception that the affirmative action policies re: selective universities have a strong socioeconomic bias toward middle and upper middle class blacks. i already cited number for harvard showing that many of the black students there have fathers with advanced degrees, or where immigrants or the children of immigrants (west indians). e.g., mcwhorter that for african american students are berkeley in 1997 65% of the students came from families where the income was more thatn $40,000, and more than 1/3 from families where the income was more than $60,000.
And? Its not as if there is a crises of asians not getting into college. People need to deal with dissapointment a little better. Life doesn’t stop and communities don’t suffer because a couple of asian or white kids don’t get into their top choice. AA has been around for a while now, and most asian communities continue to flourish academically. Asians are already overrepresented… what more can you want? Because even without AA, asians would still have to score high. That’s the standard that’s been set.
And lets be honest here. We aren’t talking about the total package of an asian person being better than the total package of a black/latino/native american person. A lot of the issue is over the SAT scores. URMs still need to be ranked highly in their class, have taken and done well in the most rigorous courses their school offers, and have done work outside the scope of their schoolwork. People get so worked up over ONE part of a student’s entire application.
I shouldn’t have said this, as I am certainly not “the best.”
People need to deal with dissapointment a little better. Life doesn’t stop and communities don’t suffer because a couple of asian or white kids don’t get into their top choice.
communities don’t suffer, but individuals do (whether not getting into harvard or yale is ‘suffering,’ that’s a personal value).
A lot of the issue is over the SAT scores. URMs still need to be ranked highly in their class, have taken and done well in the most rigorous courses their school offers, and have done work outside the scope of their schoolwork. People get so worked up over ONE part of a student’s entire application.
SATs are often a necessary precondition. if you don’t hit a particular bottom score many schools won’t consider you. of course there’s GPAs too.
and the end of day, you’re right though that AA are doing fine, overall. as long as people are aware of the standards they have to, and have, lived up to i think it’s OK. i do bristle at people like camille though who have to make things up to fit into a one-size-fits-all paradigm.
my understanding is that a lot of brown hotel owners received special loans for minorities. anyone know if this is true?
Peeps, chillax. As someone who was in this very position hardly six months ago, I really don’t think it’s that big of a deal. Sure, I was disappointed not to get into the Ivy Leagues and Stanford (eech) when I had great scores anf grades (certainly good enough to get in were I not at a heavily Asian private school, where I was competing with the rest of the best), but can I really call settling for Berkeley ‘settling’? As long as Prop 209 is upheld and STATE universities don’t do this AA business, let the private schools do whatever they want. Certainly AA is no different from their ‘legacy’ and ‘well-rounded’ hokum.
To continue with my last thought, I think it’s worse (than AA) that kids at public schools can get into selective (private) universities with greater ease than kids at competitive private schools. I’ll give you an example: the valedictorian from one of the Bay Area public middle schools transferred to our private high school in sophomore year cuz she was bored at “Mount Pregnant” High (that was the nickname). She stayed for only that one year and returned to Mt. Pregnant the next year because she found our high school too “hard” and, given her competitive valedictorian mentality, would rather settle for being the best at a mediocre public high school than being average at a really good private school, where she could have taken many more AP/Honors courses. I soon forgot about her, as junior year and SAT’s rolled around. But a couple months ago a friend of mine who attends Stanford told me that the Mt. Pregnant valedictorian was also attending Stanford. I was shocked. I had dealt with the competition and the stress at our competitive private high school, and my petootie was rejected from Stanford, while she had taken the “easy way out” and had gotten into Stanford. Now, I’m sure my stats were just as good, if not better (and I actually think they WERE better), than hers, but since I was competing with the other private school kids, my stats didn’t seem as stellar as hers. See, my school offered about 15 AP courses, of which I took 6, and I had friends who did take between 12-15 AP’s during high school. It seems it’s better to take all 6 AP’s at a school that offers only 6 (and perhaps not the 6 most ‘important’ ones, either) than to take 6 really strong (science and math, and let’s not forget Latin!) AP’s at a more competitive high school. So in addition to being screwed by my “Asian” identity, I got screwed over for being competitive at a very competitive high school. That, in my opinion, is more bogus than AA.
Again, people need to take time to contextualize the information they recieve. A family can consist of many people. I’d like to know how many children were in each of these families.
Going back to the issue of home loans: where do these families live? Are they living in suburbs with good schools, or in poorer neighborhoods because their parents cannot qualify for the loan they need to move?
Also, I mentioned before with the issue of tracking, that even black people who are wealthier are discriminated against academically… which makes using AA for black students from middle class backgrounds more justified.
I read the Mcwhorter article, it still places the majority of the value of a student on SATs.
Like I said: And? That’s life… I didn’t get into my first choice either. But instead of whining about the athletes and legacies and whoever else that got in over me, I just did the best that I could with the schools that I got into. People need to get over their sense of entitlement.
Maggi,
from what i know the school you go to does matter. e.g., graduates of andover academy or exeter can get in with lower GPAs, etc., than those from public schools for example at many east coast universities. the issue you are alluding to is really problematic in places like texas, where the top 10% of each high school is admitted to the UT system. since there is a lot of asymmetry in schools this causes problems as the ‘top 10%’ differs qualitatively. also, at elite universities a lot of the admittance seems to have a random scattershot nature after your meet the basic criteria. i know someone who went to stanford who was rejected from tulane, for example. if harvard wanted to it could have a student body composed only of perfect SATs, but as it is they admit a full range (1425 is the 25th percentile from what i recall).
But instead of whining about the athletes and legacies and whoever else that got in over me, I just did the best that I could with the schools that I got into. People need to get over their sense of entitlement.
i get what you are saying, but i do think it is a bit unfair to term students who bust their butts to get stellar credentials, and yet are still rejected from the elite schools that they set their sights on just because they don’t fit into a needed demographic. there are more important things in life, but if getting into an elite school is such a trivial thing than why have affirmative action at all?
Blacks/Latinos/NativeAmericans should study hard, do their homework, and make an effort to be smart, they can do well. And if they don’t they’ll get stuck in Iraq.
M. Nam
Maggi, your parents set you up. I would NEVER let my future children go to any of those extremely competitive private schools. They can only (or only want to) take so many students from each school. People really need to learn how things work. Look at any college prep site and you’ll see that the tier 1 schools really make a concerted effort to grab kids from public schools. I had to figure out all this stuff on my own and as soon as I learned what was competitive, I changed my schedule to match it. Which sort of hurt me as I had AP teachers who didn’t want me in their classes and graded me poorly as a result with grades of C+. Coincedentally those exams were the ones I scored highest on.
Honestly, I can see why this might be unimpressive. You had the opportunity to load up and you didn’t. You were probably less competitive than you thought (even within your own school) because you had friends who took way more AP classes than you did.
Heh, Heh, Heh
Hmm, but why take AP classes you’re not interested in, for example, if you really like science and math (like I do), you should take all the science and math AP classes (I graduated with 6.5 science credits; the required # was 3). I had friends taking AP Euro and AP US History just for the heck of it, just to “load up.” My aim was always to take the courses that interested me. My friends’ aim (the ones who got into the ‘elite’ schools) was to boost their apps. Ha, sucks for them. I ain’t complainin’ too much, I actually got 8 hours of sleep in high school. Wish they could say the same!
Razib, I am pretty sure school matters. You had to be a lot more competitive at my high school to get into an ‘elite’ school than you did at, say, Mt. Pregnant cuz guess what? My high school had AP French Lit, Euro, US History, Music Theory, Bio, Chem, Physics (2 kinds), Psych, the list goes on….If Mt. P. had only 3 AP’s and you took all 3 and were the valedictorian, you looked a lot more competitive than someone like me, who got mostly A’s (and some A+’s) in the AP’s I took, but I could have taken 12 AP’s and gotten A’s in all of ’em (like my friends did…).
Anyway, I don’t really care. I love Berkeley and can’t imagine being anywhere else. Go Bears!
How about schools in the south??? I’m a high school senior and like Maggi Noodles I take AP classes but only the ones that interest me. But what gets on my nerves is the fact that this kid in my class is half-german and half-mexican…he really doesn’t act mexican but he can get a lot more scholarships and stuff because of Affirmative Action. And competition is crazy after the hurricane, cuz we got the smart evacuees (our school is GT); many of them were brown, but left ASAP for private schools. My school’s every bit as competitve, but the racial composition isn’t white/asian, but more black/white/(insert several nationalities)/asian. Was race a factor??
what i know the school you go to does matter. e.g., graduates of andover academy or exeter can get in with lower GPAs, etc., than those from public schools for example at many east coast universities.
true, but even grads from the elite academies can get screwed if they don’t have connections:
LINK
You are in high school so I will try to be gentle. Sentences like that are not cool. How exactly does one “act Mexican?” Can we say that you “act Inidan” because you like Maggi noodles? If he sang in a mariachi band would that be “Mexican enough?”
Because the gatekeepers of change are mostly housed at these elite colleges. These are the places people go to make connections and move into politics or law or medicine. Even moreso at elite grad schools. Take Yale Law for instance. Argueably the best law school in America. Argueably because many of its students don’t go on to practice law:
Yale Law School has had a strong reputation for being an unusually academics-oriented school: a disproportionate number of its graduates does go on to further scholarly pursuits, and it is generally seen as an incubator for future legal professors (versus the corporate lawyer stereotype of Harvard Law or the intellectual property/tech lawyers of Stanford).(Link)
Most of YLS’ students are from top tiered universities. This includes its black students. You can check out the Yale BLSA page to see where many of its black students attended UG.
You can also take a look at Harvard’s BLSA page. Take note of the E-board and the types of law they specialize in:
Litigation, Civil Rights Anti Discrimination Law (Civil Rights) Civil Rights Litigation, Criminal Advocacy, Politics Litigation, Civil rights, Poverty law Health Care Law, Health Policy Litigation Litigation
A lot of these students are making sure they specialize in fields that will help their community. These aren’t students who are just trying to get themselves ahead as INDIVIDUALS.
So I definitely see a difference between the asian student thats complaining about why he didn’t get in and a black student that is trying to effect change. not to say there are no asian kids out there who want to make positive changes in society
Beige Seige – Precisely.
A day when Hrishikesh Bandhopadhyay is considered for the Gators coz he is 5’6 and 90 pounds will be the day when AA is truly an inclusive philosophy.
OneUp – Black representation in the higher ranks of athletics – dont Michael Jordan, Carl Lewis, Shaq O Neal count? Let us have some AA in the sports arena for athletes before we move onto coaches. After all sport is meant to be a reflection of the society at large. I don’t see that in the NBA / NFL teams. How about a percentage breakdown by race? Are you serious about continuing AA for upper middle class black candidates. Can you explain why? Discrimination is too vague – can you please provide more detail.
If you are a poor kid growing up in the ghettoes, I can understand the need for AA -although I would accept it very reluctantly. But if you are the child of Barack Obama I dont see why on earth you need AA. In fact, I would advocate Upper middle class kids ( of any orientation) don’t need AA.
Why does one need AA for admission to Harvard Business School? or even to join Mckinsey or GS.
No AA in OZ except for the AB & TS Islanders. Although, the smart ones move to the USA after Uni.
AA advocates picking and choosing the fields of AA is a copout. Let us have AA in every field – not just education and jobs!!!
Blacks/Latinos/NativeAmericans should study hard, do their homework, and make an effort to be smart, they can do well.
But if they don’t do well, it’s not necessarily because they didn’t do those things…
A day when Hrishikesh Bandhopadhyay is considered for the Gators coz he is 5’6 and 90 pounds will be the day when AA is truly an inclusive philosophy.
depends on how you define affirmative action. the old standard i heard was that affirmative action is a bonus when all other things or equal, etc. sports is comparatively meritocratic, you had to have cartels and explicit bans to keep blacks out of high level athletics. once a few teams allowed them in they all had to join in or lose. the argument about unis is i think that there is more than merit going on here. we do for example accept legacies, athletic ability and regional balance as facts. my own primary concern is that i think that race is simply weighted too far in some cases, and i think it is fundamentally a band-aid solution that is much cheaper than actually investing in lower level education and declaring a kulturkampf. the best of the best and the elites do fine under affirmative action, their own children have reserved spots and what not. the situation is analogous to india in that the problem is that what happens when you have a poor asian/white (poor brahmin) who is assumed to be more privileged and have experienced less life difficulties than a upper middle class/black latino (wealthy dalit). there will always be people who “game” the system, but people have different places where they draw the line at gaming and how good the approximation of a model to reality is.
in any case, back to taz’s initial question: where do browns stand? i think you need to add a lot of qualifiers. i think browns from upper middle class backgrounds don’t lose a lot in this system because they start out with a lot of advantages and even if they don’t make their top selection school they have back up plans and a lot of supports which can aid them in their life. just as affluent whites, and blacks, and latinos, do. in contrast, the brown from a working class background probably has less margin and is more invested into getting into the right school because that is the only way they can make the appropriate connections to jump into the upper middle class. are there enough to the latter for this issue to matter? that depends on where you draw the line. and if you really want to work the system, why not just say you’re black? it isn’t like they double check, and south asians are black, right (as a commenter here has been asserting over and over).
Og my gosh, come on, the list of “attributes” of asian people is basically a word for word re-telling of stereotypes; good at taking tests? check. not athletic? check. no interests but piano and science? check. dweeby/dorky? check.
This ain’t a debate, its fill in the blank with stereotypes day.
I’m not mad, but come on man.
Elite athletes are a bit different than even run of the mill athletes, most of the people who play (semi-professional) athletics in college are just that, professionals at an early stage of their training. On the level of regular athletes, a tennis player is probably as good an athlete as a football player at a non Division I college.
And this “well-rounded” thing is a bunch of hokey. Well rounded could mean knowing two languages and having a familiarity in at least two different cultures right? Who is more well rounded than people who can speak multiple languages? Or does well rounded just mean that you both study and party? Is this a valuable skill that can’t be learned once in college? How to chug a beer, act a fool, and still be presentable for class the next day?
Seperate from the merits of rectifying discrimination. But this well-rounded thing seems like a total, and pretty much totally offensive, red herring.
Peace to all the Geeks!
sahej,
deal. do you remember how the media treated bobby jindal?* “dark skinned” “over achieving” freak??? stay in your place and you’ll earn some praise 🙂
razib,
word, politics aside, are you telling me Tucker Carlson is more well-rounded than Bobby Jindal? No weight is placed at all at a central reality here; a lot of Asian Americans are more well-rounded than even people who take trips to Europe. Many of them were born in homes where speaking two languages was the norm. If you want to learn how to adjust to multiple ways of thinking; try buying milk in market in Ludhiana. Ludhiania Pechano!
There is very little taking into account of who Asian-Americans are, it seems like. A lot of us live within multiple cultures every day, but because we are differently phenotyped, its ignored while people with a high school level of a “foreign” language and a maybe two-month trip to a “foreign” culture are praised as if they have life experiences that will enrich their lives forever.
Sorry but that’s just my belief.
There is very little taking into account of who Asian-Americans are, it seems like. A lot of us live within multiple cultures every day, but because we are differently phenotyped, its ignored while people with a high school level of a “foreign” language and a maybe two-month trip to a “foreign” culture are praised as if they have life experiences that will enrich their lives forever.
1) i was being tongue-in-cheek when i said “well rounded.” yes, it is a euphamism.
2) nevertheless, i won’t totally discount Oneup’s reference to studying on friday and saturday night. friday night at the science library in college was “asian night” 🙂 that being said, obviously just because you study a lot doesn’t mean that’s the totality of your life, but i think there are genuine issues when it comes to “life experience” that chatting away on a msg board won’t really flesh out.
3) asian american is a big term with a lot of people with different experiences. affirmative action as it is practiced today is rather coarse. there will always be an imperfect mapping of social policy on its asserted ends. whether it is too imperfect is dependent on your own opinion.
though i tend to be skeptical of the polices enacted today, as i stated, i am also skeptical that our society will long tolerate the ethnic imbalances at places like the UC system. we’ve been focusing on blacks on this thread, but i suspect the bigger issue will be latinos, there are already rumblings of anger that the UC system has too many asians and too few latinos when it is ostensibly a reflection of the state of california. i expect that eventually there will be a push toward open admissions like there was in the CUNY system in new york in an effort to be more proportional. that’s just the path of least resistance. but there’s a good generation of excellence to go, to use it while it’s still around 🙂
Razib,
I think the well-rounded thing is a euphamism that should be unpacked. Studying all the time can create a lack of social skills is a painful thing to have and/or witness.
In general though, do you think I’m disagreeing with your points brough up earlier? I’m really just writing my own opinions and not directed at anyone else’s specific arguements. This well-rounded thing though is restricting to Asian-Americans, who while diverse, have a lot of similiar experiences, being intuitively bicultural often among them.
shanti sarai nu! (peace y’all)
. This well-rounded thing though is restricting to Asian-Americans, who while diverse, have a lot of similiar experiences, being intuitively bicultural often among them.
jews used to get the same shizz.