Writes Megan McArdle in "Why the architecture of affirmative action was always destined to collapse" (WaPo).
१ नोव्हेंबर, २०२२
"[I]n 1960, more than 9 in 10 Americans accounted for in the census were White — and of the remainder, the overwhelming majority were Black..."
"In 1960, schools could have given underrepresented minorities a boost, allowed some minorities such as Asian Americans to be overrepresented, while retaining a representative White majority. But today, Harvard University’s own internal research has suggested that Asian Americans would make up 43 percent of an admitted class if only academics were considered. Allowing Asian numbers to grow in accordance with their academic overperformance, while keeping affirmative action in place, would presumably have left the White majority substantially underrepresented.
That might be morally justified on various grounds, but it is politically untenable.... America can ask some members of the White majority to step aside in favor of underrepresented minorities with lower grades and test scores. And in the name of procedural fairness, America can ask disappointed White applicants to suck it up when they were outcompeted for university places by overperforming minority groups. But America cannot ask both those things at once — not when the numbers get so big and the stakes so high."
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Blacks need to get their own act together as they don't trust whitey to do it for them, nor should they.
But folks like Jackson and Sharpton aren't doing their 'community' any favors by absolving blacks of all blame.
Black moms and dads need to get married and stay married before anything changes.
I would be fine if 100% of every elite university were Asians who'd worked hard enough to earn it. Maybe that would teach the rest of us to emulate their ethic. That approach sure works in athletics, where there's no AA.
Then there's the Tiger Woods problem. Does a half black/half Asian applicant get a boost or the boot based on Harvard's racial scores?
Seriously, the mixed race cohort is only going to grow. How black is black? How hispanic is hispanic? Are we going to develop a reverse Jim Crow weighting system? Are we going to be okay with Liz Warren's (possibly) 0.1% Indian DNA as a plus factor for admission?
In my view there is absolutely no fair way to do such a thing. None. Not possible.
Alternatives:
1. Encourage universities to to consider social disadvantage rather than race as a boost factor. Billy McCoy's kid from rural WV gets a boost but Obama's kids do not.
2. Strictly merit based. Scores, grades, achievements, etc.
3. Private institutions get to use whatever criteria they want. Student body of all Blacks (ahem, I think we already have this in a few places). Student body with no Estonians. Student body exclusively of half Samoan/half Albanian left-handed tightrope walkers. In other words, admit whoever you like, but don't expect any federal funding whatsoever.
Sometimes I agree with Megan. Today is one of those times. Progressives continually seek to have their cake and eat it too but the time for choosing is upon them. One way or the other. No splitting the baby. Just stop using race as a basis for official decision making. If crazy California can do it and still have diversity without manipulation then the other 49 states can join us in the 21st century and do the same.
The problem is that racial discrimination is morally wrong; and the fundamental architecture of affirmative action is that two wrongs make a right.
As America has become less white it has not become more black.
College is mostly for girls now as well.
Good grief. "academic overperformance"; What an atrocious concept.
This topic is always looked at from the perspective of the individual, and I think this is wrong headed. Society needs the best doctors, scientists, and engineers it can produce, and that means admitting to college those who demonstrate "academic overperformance.
Leave affirmative action (aka discrimination) to the humanities, where it won't hurt anyone.
Now, incorporate the implications of multi-racial, multi-ethnic people. Following Tiger Woods in the 1990s, many people have ambiguous racial "preference" versus "disadvantage."
This framework falls apart even when looking at the same racial mixes:
* Is the half-Chinese, half-White child of a Silicon Valley executive disadvantaged? [e.g., Mark Zuckerberg's class and subculture]
* Is the the half-Vietnamese, half-White child of farmers advantaged? [e.g., Hmong refugees forced to leave their home country after the Vietnam War.]
Some backward-looking groups and political power bases need forceful pushback to understand contemporary society.
Poor Megan. Sold her soul for the paycheck.
Now she is shilling for racism.
There is no excuse for affirmative action. The results are bad for everyone including the minorities it is supposed to help.
It makes sure that in every institution and in every situation black and hispanic students are surrounded by white/asian people who have performed better than them by every academic measure.
This is an obvious and clear recipe for disaster and embitterment and patronage. The research all supports this.
The people pushing affirmative action are not acting in good faith. Megan is just trying to make it seem like they are.
maybe we should have quotas? or, maybe gentlemen's agreements to limit jews (oh! i mean asians)
A Taiwanese M.E. I worked with stated that his immigrant/naturalized parents always pushed their children to engineering or medical schooling, nothing less was acceptable. He also said everybody hates somebody but it is up to you to not let that stop you.
Compare that to racism/victimhood conversations
DarkHelmet said...
1. Encourage universities to to consider social disadvantage rather than race as a boost factor. Billy McCoy's kid from rural WV gets a boost but Obama's kids do not
once again, That's only helping poor white trash; and NO ONE wants to do That
we want to help Rich Black children.. Like Obama's (who AREN'T going to get into college on their IQ)
"...might be morally justified on various grounds, but it is politically untenable"
What bothers me most about the dominant coverage of Supreme Court cases is everyone treats the decision as political (and in this article, also "moral"). Don't elementary schools teach civics anymore?
The morality or political popularity of a law is for the legislature to consider. And for this particular law, they considered those factors in 1964, when they passed Title VI, which outlaws racial discrimination in education. The only decision the court has to make is the application of the law to the case.
Why don't I ever see people who passionately want racial discrimination to be re-legalized clamoring and parading "Repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964"? Do they not understand that the policy they wish to follow was outlawed by Congress and not the court? Shouldn't the news coverage of cases like this at least mention what the case is really about?
I don't think she is defending it, just pointing out that the system in place is not sustainable.
Fighting racism with different racism never seemed to me to be a good idea. The left always sees issues as black and white. It is so much more complex than that. "Race" is something that is truly fluid and subjective. Sorting people based on it is not only wrong, it is unworkable.
The obvious solution is to decree that henceforth every third person identifying as Asian on college application will be deemed sufficiently white-adjacent to be reclassified as white for admissions purposes. After all, as the attorney for UNC told the Supremes yesterday, what matters is how a person self-identifies. We are also told by all the right people that the self is just another social construct, so it's a small step to asserting social control over that aspect of life as well.
QED. Problem solved.
Affirmative action was doomed for another reason that McArdle doesn't address.
A fact that is rarely mentioned is that the richest person in America is African-American. Elon Musk was born in South Africa. Another is that if John Kerry had been elected president, Teresa Heinz Kerry would have been our first African-American first lady as she was born in Mozambique.
Is affirmative action for African-Americans or Black folks? As a high school teacher, I wonder how racial statistics are gathered, and what counts as Black. Genetic heritage companies have data on this. On average, a Black American has 30% white DNA. A biracial person, like Barack Obama, could genetically be a majority white person.
How do schools ascertain the race of a student? Perhaps the admissions clerk consults a Sherwin Williams style color chart. The skin tone line might be between "Baked Cookie" and "Soft Fawn". That isn't a very objective process, so we could run DNA on each incoming student. Do we really want to get back to quadroons, octoroons or a one drop rule?
No, we expect that race is self-reported. Some people lie, but it's far more likely that some parents report incorrectly because the DNA hasn't been run.
Affirmative action is too important to implement without defining terms. Defining the terms is likely to be ugly and divisive. Race should not be used for governmental or official purposes.
I would be fine with academic based admissions, even if that increased the Asian numbers, provided Chi-Com nationals were excluded.
Larry Elder used to talk about this on his radio show. He described the local library, which was filled with Asian kids studying with "tiger moms" standing over them. Outside the library were black kids doing skate board tricks and "Break Dancing."
Who could have predicted the outcome?
Stop counting by race and the numbers disappear.
"consider social disadvantage rather than race"
California and fedgov contracting did that years ago. But it just became a proxy for race.
'Then there's the Tiger Woods problem. Does a half black/half Asian applicant get a boost or the boot based on Harvard's racial scores?'
If you count every drop, as good democrats do, then Tiger would be considered the greatest Asian golfer in history.
His dad had some mixed white/black heritage but his mother was 100% Asian.
So why is Tiger considered 'black' and not Asian?
There's a story about Ronald Reagan. When he was governor of California, he was told that without affirmative action, 70% of the students at Berkeley would would be Asian.
Reagan: "So what?"
These are the debates and calculations of multiracial societies, day after day.
If they had let that 90% white majority in 1960 vote on whether to transform the U.S. into a majority-minority nation in virtually a single lifetime, what would they have chosen?
It's funny how the reactionary label has been so successfully applied to conservatives because we try and conserve cultural things that are beneficial, but democrats have always had the biggest problem dealing with inevitable change because of their progressive misbelief in the perfectability of man. Of course perfecting the omelet always means breaking eggs but rarely results in a good meal.
That introduces the analogy I am hazarding here: We are at the same point now with Affirmative Action as we were with Slavery in about 1860. The inevitability of slavery ending was baked into the ratification of the Constitution and all the signers knew it, which is why it required a compromise to get slave state agreement. But any plain reading of the fresh new Constitution would prove to be incompatible with the institution of slavery: there's no way to harmonize the bill of rights and ownership of human beings. The writing was on the wall, but democrats went so far as to start a civil war and then having lost that remove a sitting president in vain attempts to impose their will on America.
Even after slavery ended they insisted the Black man must be coddled publicly while persecuting them privately through violence and intimidation. But let's move on to 1960 as Megan sets it up. From the beginning of Affirmative Action the seeds of its end were sown: after all once a remedy is applied no more interference by government or private parties is necessary. And the civil rights acts movement made clear what the Act of 1964 made explicit: private acts were now under public scrutiny, for if a business can continue to discriminate without the law telling them too, then racism would persist. Therefore the private transaction was now in the public purview, therefore the public had a very strong incentive to sunset these laws once the "goal" was accomplished. No single institution in America and certainly higher education cannot and will not ever perfectly reflect the USA as a whole, nothing self-selected could be expected to. So quotas in whatever disguise they wear are not going to work. Who's to say what is the "right balance" of ethnic individuals or skintones in college? In sports? In life?
Here skepticism will win the day for Americans do not trust ANYBODY to make such decisions in modern America. Who can be trusted to wield the discrimination wand with care and precision and have the rest of us agree that is "right" and proper? Not the Ruling Class. They have proven themselves unfit to decide such things. Especially NOW when sitting members of the court lie to our faces and claim not to even KNOW the definition of "woman," a term used in the very statutes these people are there to rule on!
Absurdity cannot continue unimpeded forever. Stop it now. It's OK. California did it and there is NO shortage of minorities working their way here, wanting to live here, wanting to go to our unadjusted-for-race schools. We're not special here in the Golden State. Y'all can do it too.
Like Obama's (who AREN'T going to get into college on their IQ)
Aren't they already out of college?
There is nothing that requires every institution be "representative" of the racial makeup of our country. If Harvard is 50% "Asian" or (white or black or whatever) who gives a shit, so long as there is no discrimination going on and everyone is judged by the same standards? The problem is the left views everything through a prism of race instead of looking at individuals and their personal qualities. They need to get over this idea that they need to correct for "history". That simply cannot be done without punishing people who did nothing wrong. Nobody alive today owned slaves. Most never pushed Jim Crow. Hell, I've never been further south than Virginia. Why should my kids be discriminated against for what happened prior to my birth or theirs? That makes no sense.
Further, the notion that white people need to "suck it up" when outcompeted is pure trash. Everyone who is outcompeted needs to suck it up - not just white folks. That's the solution that the correct ruling from SCOTUS can provide. Junk all this racial discrimination. If you're Harvard, you want the best, not the best blacks or best whites or best browns. The best is the best.
The left knows that far a high enough percentage of black folks cannot compete, so they're putting their fingers on the scales in their favor. They should be trying to figure out why (out of wedlock births, blaming white people for everything, and public schools run by Democrats) and work on that. Instead, they complain about history - that isn't the solution because you cannot change history and letting unqualified people into Harvard creates a mismatch that hurts more than hit helps.
There is no moral case for anti-white racial discrimination because racial discrimination is insidious and immoral as a matter of course. Such nonsense is based on the premise that white people today are responsible for what a very tiny number of white people in history did when we weren't alive. FUCK THAT! If black folks or brown folks or whatever folks want to start playing that game, then no one will win. Our prisons are filled with black men (far exceeding their share of the population) who have committed heinous violent crimes. Are all black people responsible for that? I don't think so, but whose rules are we playing by?
When LBJ signed the Immigration Act into law in 1965, neither he nor anyone else seemed to have the slightest glimmer that this was going to end up in considerable tension with the Civil Rights Act that LBJ had signed into law just a year earlier. What a perfect example of the law of unintended consequences. Eventually, in the 1990s, Barbara Jordan, chairing a commission on immigration reform, did recognize the emerging conflict and made some recommendations aimed at resolving the dilemma (primarily by imposing a number of restrictions on immigration, especially the illegal kind).
Arguably, suburban White middle class parents do think of niche sports like fencing, squash, and water polo as affirmative action for their own group, if only to get the admissions than the other affirmative action denies them. Indeed, college athletic programs can all be seen as a kind of affirmative action in so far as they let less academically qualified applicants in.
This sounds a lot like Steve Sailer's grudging admiration for the skill with which the Ivies and Ivy-adjacent kept their brand alive. Decades ago, they admitted enough Jews to keep from becoming second rate academically (and maybe getting competing Jewish colleges founded), while also admitting athletes and legacies and slightly underperforming whites, in order to stay connected to established elites and to make it look like any sufficiently talented, ambitious high school student could get in. (East) Asians are the 21st Century's Jewish equivalent. So far, the schools have managed to walk the tight rope but it ain't easy.
You cannot say everyone is equal but some are more 'equal' than others.
Either all have the same basic rights or we don't.
We tried that once when the US had slavery and slaves were counted as 3/5s a person.... and had a civil war over that.
We are all equal or we are not. Simple as that.
@ Sean Gleeson - The 1964 Civil Rights Act was, um, "modified" by Congress in the early 1980s. From now on, disparate results were pretty much assumed to be caused by unlawful discrimination and working to reduce the disparity was probably going to be okay if you weren't too obvious about it.
So, effectively, the 1964 Civil Rights Act was partially repealed.
Would it be conservative to say, "Restore the Civil Rights Act of 1964!"
"Allowing Asian numbers to grow in accordance with their academic overperformance, while keeping affirmative action in place, would presumably have left the White majority substantially underrepresented."
In fact, non-Jewish whites are substantially underrepresented in the Ivy League.
Critics of AA talk as if "academic merit" is easily measured. It is not. For the most part, how well you do in high school is function of how hard you work. So, should Harvard be admitting the applicants that work the hardest? What about underachievers with very high standardized test scores but relatively low grades because they find high school classes boring? Think of the "smartest" kids you knew in high school. How did they turn out as adults?
Then there is the matter of potential. How do you measure that when deciding whom to admit? People point to athletic recruiting as an area where AA plays no part. It is a bit more complicated that simply finding the best athletes. Is it the best now or those who might blossom the most in college? What about non-physical qualities such as leadership and being willing to subordinate yourself to the team?
Critics of AA talk as if "academic merit" is easily measured. It is not. For the most part, how well you do in high school is function of how hard you work. So, should Harvard be admitting the applicants that work the hardest? What about underachievers with very high standardized test scores but relatively low grades because they find high school classes boring? Think of the "smartest" kids you knew in high school. How did they turn out as adults?
Then there is the matter of potential. How do you measure that when deciding whom to admit? People point to athletic recruiting as an area where AA plays no part. It is a bit more complicated that simply finding the best athletes. Is it the best now or those who might blossom the most in college? What about non-physical qualities such as leadership and being willing to subordinate yourself to the team?
Race is a losing game.
The NBA is racist.
There, I said it...
America can ask some members of the White majority to step aside in favor of underrepresented minorities with lower grades and test scores. And in the name of procedural fairness, America can ask disappointed White applicants to suck it up when they were outcompeted for university places by overperforming minority groups. But America cannot ask both those things at once — not when the numbers get so big and the stakes so high.
1: They're not "ask"ing, they're telling
2: That only worked so long os the Democrat supporting "Whites" could still get their kids into the "good schools".
but once it became a competition between those grind "Asians" and the "good White people" who vote Democrat, racism and Democrat political advantage trumped "diversity" and "recompense for past harms"
I do find it amusing that no one ever talks about how viciously the Chinese were abused, post US Civil War, in America.
Or how maybe Japanese descendants of those sent to US internment camps should be getting in all all that "restitution"
Why would I want to join a club that would not have me as a member, the chief asks.
Well, it’s an elite club and…
I don’t get diversity… Supreme Judge Thomas interrupts.
Here we are, the most diverse supreme group ever, about to close the path that got us here. - Wise Latina
I was surprised to find out that Kagan was such a sexist bigot.
In response to a line of questioning regarding gender-neutral admissions standards, she said,
“White men get the thumb on the scale, but people who have been kicked in the teeth by our society for centuries do not?”
Women have been overrepresented in college admissions during the entire lifetime of any woman currently applying for admissions.
Apparently Kagan believes discriminating against men now, somehow helps women who were discriminated against in 1722.
If Kagan does not possess a time machine to bring these women forward to the present day, then she appears to be quite the bigot to me.
Scrolling down, I read the David Lat post before this one. His take -- even just the quote you grabbed -- is much more insightful than this. I don't want to try to understand McArdle's oatmeal mush.
Diversity is a thing in name only. We don’t do diversity. Nobody does.
I’ve lived near two major metropolitan cities and now I’m getting to know Atlanta.
Every one of these people segregate themselves without any prompting whatsoever.
Every one of them has an India, China, Latin and Korean business location. (The rest is white I suppose)
And then you find out, people when they first get here and when they move they tend to move to areas populated by people who look and talk like them.
Equity and inclusion is an extreme version of affirmative action. Whereas Affirmative Action sought to deal with isolated issue -the treatment of blacks by their government, equity and inclusion is costing me. Literally.
I will share with you how at a later opportunity. I’m supposed to be working right now.
California much farther along in this regard. Soon to be non-hispanic white minority, but never a large non-hispanic black component. Asians dominate top UC campuses.
There is a not so nuanced distinction between affirmative action and affirmative discrimination processed through Diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry), Inequity, and Exclusion (DIE) doctrine.
Diversity is the real Holy Ghost.
Because a family with Spanish roots who live in a mansion in Mexico city has so much in common with the Mestizo maid that they employ.
They are both, after all, Hispanic...
Joe Smith @12:21
"The NBA is racist."
Even better, the NBA is a meritocracy.
Why the architecture of affirmative action was always destined to collapse
When I arrived in California in 1985 and learned there were caps on Asian enrollment at its elite universities, my first thought was that the internal contradictions of affirmative action would soon lead to its demise in the state; eleven years later it was outlawed.
Hubert the Infant said...
Critics of AA talk as if "academic merit" is easily measured. It is not
Yes, it is.
Gardes + SATs + Achievement Test scores gives you a highly positive correlation with college success.
That's what the vast majority of the people from groups that "benefit" from "Affirmative action" end up in joke fields where they are graded on their skin color, not their academic ability, and / or flunk out.
It's called "mismatch", and the only way you can make the claim you made is because you're a complete ignoramus, or else a liar.
Which is it?
For the most part, how well you do in high school is function of how hard you work. So, should Harvard be admitting the applicants that work the hardest?
you, I take it, would prefer they admit the ones who flaked off the most?
Ability and willingness to work is a prerequisite for success in most fields. so yes, "elite" colleges should be rewarding that.
What about underachievers with very high standardized test scores but relatively low grades because they find high school classes boring? Think of the "smartest" kids you knew in high school. How did they turn out as adults?
We're all successfully professionals with STEM backgrounds and tech related jobs.
The reason why you look at high school grades AND SATs AND Achievement tests is because the grades show willingness to to necessary work (there's lots of boring crap in college, and in real life at real jobs), the SATs show IQ, and the Achievement tests show whether or not you actually DID learn anything.
What I wish the anti-racism lawyer had said was "all the 'holistic' stuff is bullshit used to excuse letting in inferior students on racists or classist grounds. It all should be dumped, the Educational institutions should be treated the way that Southern bigots were treated int eh 60s - 80s, and they should be forced to either go with just objective measures that they make public, or else no Federal $$$ of any sort, no research grants, no student loans, nothing. Because it's all trash"
Then there is the matter of potential. How do you measure that when deciding whom to admit?
SAT + Achievement Test + grades.
You know, repeating the same lie over and over again doesn't suddenly make it the truth.
Those numbers work. They've worked for decades. The Left hates them because revision to the mean means that a lot of upper middle class and upper class kids are nowhere near as smart as their parents, and that objective measures for admissions means their kids will get beaten out.
Tough shit
Who do you want doing heart surgery on your child- the person most able or the one with the correct skin color?
America can ask some members of the White majority to step aside in favor of underrepresented minorities with lower grades and test scores.
I categorically disagree with McArdle here.
Pillage Idiot said...
I was surprised to find out that Kagan was such a sexist bigot.
Why? It's a requirement for her side
“White men get the thumb on the scale, but people who have been kicked in the teeth by our society for centuries do not?”
1: As no one who has been alive for "centuries" is applying for college, that's at best a non-sequitur, and more realistically it's a demonstration of her own deep bigotry and racism: "all white / black / yellow" people are the same, right? Everything that happened to someone not you, not related to you, but who just had the same skin color or tastes as you, happened to you, because your'e all the same"
FOAD B!tch
2: Lots of women are still going to college in order to get their Mrs.
Can't get it if there are significantly more women than men there
3: Many of the "White men" applying to college right now have personally been "kicked in the teeth" by the education establishment, because they were "white men".
So yes, they actually deserve some support
I>“White men get the thumb on the scale, but people who have been kicked in the teeth by our society for centuries do not?” Kagen/I>
Prove that. Or STFU
Kagen. "Wise Latina (chortle). Ketanji.
There's a liberal brain trust for you.
Repeal the Nineteenth.
“White men get the thumb on the scale, but people who have been kicked in the teeth by our society for centuries do not?”
Isn't the point to take the thumb off the scale? For everyone? What the hell is she talking about?
Just food for thought:
First step. lets get rid of legacy enrollment. Yeah I know who writes the checks. But unless you, at least, consider the legacy issue don't say meritocracy solves all.
Or you can just have a sliding scale:
SAT below XXX, add $25,000 to your tuition
SAT between XXX and YYY, add $10,000 to your tuition
SAT above YYY, flat rate tuition.
Legacy is your only path: Add $50,000 to your tuition.
By the way, the one drop rule may be coming back. A friend did a 23 and me. While his results were predominately Scotch/Irish (I forgot the term they used for that area). There was a fairly minor scattering in other parts of Europe. But he was also a very tiny bit sub-Saharan African. Can he (not should he) claim to be African American? If not, why not?
Also lost in this is the one-drop rule. There is no such thing as "passing" and there never was--if you look white, you are white. Period. If you look white, you don't have the black experience no matter what your birth certificate says. Affirmative Action ignores this and gives (or denies) its benefits based on pedigree rather than lived experience.
And, of course, it's even worse than that because it gives its biggest benefits to the most affluent, privileged minorities because they are the ones who know how to work the system. Affirmative Action gives no more benefit to poor blacks than it does to poor whites.
Doug said...“White men get the thumb on the scale, but people who have been kicked in the teeth by our society for centuries do not?” Kagen
Prove that. Or STFU
Kicked in the teeth for centuries? Who? Who has been kicked in the teeth for centuries? Who has had teeth for centuries? Who has been alive for centuries, with or without teeth?
The problem with affirmative action is that it discriminates based on race.
It is untenable for that reason alone.
Jupiter said...
In fact, non-Jewish whites are substantially underrepresented in the Ivy League.
Non Jewish white males even moreso.
"White men get the thumb on the scale, but people who have been kicked in the teeth by our society for centuries do not?” Kagen
I thought she was supposed to be the smart one.
"For the most part, how well you do in high school is function of how hard you work."
Funny, my experience suggests the opposite.
Now college…
"Asians," "Whites," "Blacks," God help us all. McCardle operates with the same demented pseudo-racial categories as everyone else, categories designed by the ever-present bureaucracies that apparently define reality for us all. So, she plays with those categories to come up with a clever "criticism" of affirmative action that in fact accepts all its premises and its framework. She just says now that there are so many smart "Asians" along with all the "Blacks," we cannot sustain politically the squeeze this puts on "Whites." I suppose there is some twisted logic in this, but it has nothing to do with the powerful political and moral reasons for getting rid of this insane system in total.
First, who the hell are these "Asians"? Are they in fact "a group." They are Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, Thai, etc., etc. An incredible array of varied cultures from a vast region of the earth. If Harvard has 43% "Asians," it has right there an incredibly rich and varied "diversity" of cultures -- if such diversity really were the valued end. "Whites" of course vary in a million ways as well, ethnically, in terms of economic class, geographically, etc. Even "Blacks" increasingly include a varied cultural mix given the rapid rise in the percentage of African and Caribbean immigrants since the 1980s. To say nothing of the fact that in America today, vast shares of all of these are in reality intermixtures racially in a thousand different ways.
What is true of all these groups, more importantly, is that each applicant from these groups applies not as a group member but as an individual, for himself or herself. They have no desire to be REPRENTATIVES of any of these groups or subgroups. They are not interchangeable with others who might "represent" them just as well, since what matters to each of them is his or her own future, own abilities and own worthiness of being admitted. It is a disgrace to treat them as "representatives" and add them up with others in their category. Demeaning in the extreme.
It is all a horrible game, it has set us all at each other's throats, and I have to believe that for the elites that run increasingly mediocre institutions like Harvard and Yale, that is its very purpose. It's only purpose now.
Has anyone polled recent immigrants (legal or not) to see if they like the idea of paying more taxes in order to pay reparations to Sasha and Malia Obama?
That 90% white was based on a common understanding of visual color, not the actual tribal politics. In elitist terms, pretty much only WASPs were white enough for keys to the kingdom. I was talking to a Jewish friend in college, ca 1972, about how disappointed my mother was that her application to the DAR was rejected. She had done all the research and she clearly met the criteria. She said to me “Oh, honey, (Houston Jews talked pretty much like everyone else) your Scot Irish. You’re no more white to those people than I am.” That provided clarity to me. Most of the groups that had been promoted to white, the Jews, Italians, Germans, Celts, etc., etc, are just the cannon fodder used to protect the elite from the racial Justice they promote.
My Scots-Irish granny was DAR (and UDC). I guess all snobbery is local.
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