The answer is yes, but The New York Times is determined to make the "swirl of uncertainty, confusion and misinformation" more "opaque and bewildering." It's the ongoing argument that the Supreme Court has made a terrible mistake.
As this article — and every other article on this subject — points out, the Supreme Court's opinion explicitly says it shouldn't be "construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise."
As this article — and every other article on this subject — points out, the Supreme Court's opinion explicitly says it shouldn't be "construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise."
By clouding the question, the NYT burdens non-white applicants, who shouldn't have to feel they might be doing something wrong by discussing their race. But clouding the question is part of critiquing the Court, and that is, apparently, the priority.
१३७ टिप्पण्या:
the court has instead created a new burden for students
The court has done no such thing.
The institutions’ desire to play racial twister has turned the standard college application into a burden for students.
This was just as true before the court’s ruling.
"levels of diversity"
= lots and lots of unqualified minorities (chiefly blacks)
I agree one can mention race or not, but it sure would be nice when people could move past some vague concept of centuries past defining who they are today. They are an applicant.
"The levels of diversity they would like to see"
While knowing America isn't nearly as racially successful as it pretends.
There’s.a word for what they’re doing- profiling. Guess its okay when they do it…
Whites need only be creative enough with the stereotypes the committee is seeking without proclaiming you be born a poor nlack child.
Based on the SCOTUS decision, Asian and white people could also write about how race discrimination has affected their lives.
At some point, universities will need to remember that they are in the United States, and are subject to its laws and Constitution. Unfortunately, their creative function has become cancerous, having lost the ability for self-correction. The alternative is for some very unpleasant actions by "Deplorables" to remind them of this fact, risking throwing the baby out with the bath water. At my own undergraduate alma mater, some pointed reminders by major benefactors have had a modest salutary effect.
rehajm said...
“Whites need only be creative enough with the stereotypes the committee is seeking without proclaiming you be born a poor black child.”
Navin Johnson nods in agreement.
Breezy said...
“Based on the SCOTUS decision, Asian and white people could also write about how race discrimination has affected their lives.”
Yeah, I was thinking Asians would have to tap dance around the cues (and clues) that would out them as racially Asian.
Somebody please explain to me why it is so important to have enough Blacks but not too many Asians.
Change your name to Kinesha or La’Jatametrious, write about the suffering you endured as a negro in racist America and jump the line of other Asians into Harvard
For the left and the NYT, issues such as racism, drug abuse, homelessness, and educational deficits are not meant to be solved. They are to be preserved and managed for political advantage.
You're a legal professor, Ann. Or once was.
What's it called when a group of people conspire with each other to violate court rulings?
I think it's called "obstruction of justice" and "racketeering." Those would be felony crimes, right?
But maybe you can shed some light on this question, given your experience.
While knowing America isn't nearly as racially successful as it pretends.
Not nearly as racially successful as "still and forever in the grip of white supremacy"? Because that's what's being pretended right now, and I have a very hard time believing we're doing worse than that.
But I'm sure that's not what you meant. So - as Douglas Murray urges, I will ask this question: compared to what?
This is not going to be as easy as many speculate. If colleges want specific targets of this or that race, they are going to have to be very careful not to let that on in any texts or emails, since all of them can be part of discovery for the inevitable lawsuits. You can't have a text or email that says "we need to let this kid in because we are way under for blacks at this point" or anything like that. Will all their communications now be in person or on the phone?
Clouding up thinking is precisely what the Left does best. When you can change the definition of things, the very meaning, then you have won the battle. Turning black and white into grey is their specialty. Language is always the first area of attack. Diversity? Race? Qualifications?
Total systematic dishonesty. Students must first discern just how the school prefers to be lied to, then they have to thread the needle of dishonesty to maintain the fiction that there is no affirmative action. All the while, everyone is fully aware that the system is based on lies.
No one could accuse higher education of not preparing their students for the world they will be going out into after graduation.
Writing those essays sounds like a great application for Chat GPT. Same for the tedious "diversity statements" that college professors have to write.
"What's it called when a group of people conspire with each other to violate court rulings?"
I quoted the language of the opinion. People are trying to follow that and it gives leeway to use race, so you fans of colorblindness are getting ahead of yourself accusing others of conspiracy. Read and get your act together and spare me this kind of bullshit.
Blogger The Crack Emcee said...
While knowing America isn't nearly as racially successful as it pretends.
"Racially successful"? Nobody is being kept down, some just aren't rising up as much as might be hoped by all well meaning people. And that group includes virtually everyone Crack.
Treating others the way you’d like to be treated doesn’t work for the millions of self-flagellating lefties in this country.
Screw the Supreme court. Let's find a way to worship at the temple of race by admitting unprepared black kids who will fail, in order to make us feel virtuous.
If the Unies want a diverse student body, they need to pull from a diverse, successful high school student body. But, that's the problem. The Black kids don't care about getting and won't work to get a high quality education. The parents of the Black kids, mainly single moms, don't demand that their kids get a high quality education.
Fix the Black single parent family into Black dual parent family with an emphasis on education, and Harvard and Yale won't need to use subterfuge to get a diverse student body.
The universities race obsession is the destructive trendy idea that needs to die…and the Supremes were generous- take the gify and STFU while living what’s left of your lives you should have done a better job stealing when Hillary ran…
I know this is a radical idea, and that I might be subject to public shaming or even worse, cancellation of my social credits, but this week's favorite story line seems to be about college-age students being unable to perform simple math or write coherent sentences, supposedly due to the 'pandemic', being kept out of the classroom for a couple of years (out of their 12 year primary/secondary school experience).
Is it just possible that terrible educational standards and an overly powerful national teacher's union could be a factor? I do clearly remember hearing Randy Weingarten pontificating full-time for months, even after the pandemic was over, that teachers were at terrible risk just doing their job, while cashiers, medical practitioners, EMT workers, plane stewardesses, and cops seemed to make it through just fine, unless they were being harassed about taking the jab and liking it.
Anyway - how about the radical step of using academic performance and personal achievement (in other important areas of individual development) to signal the worthiness of a candidate's application to college/university? I know it sounds crazy, but it might just improve things across the board on all of these issues to have a leveled playing field as a starting assumption.... You know, that whole 'incentivize what you want' thing.
There is a New Yorker cartoon where a banker says “These new regulations will completely change what we have do to to do to get around regulations!” Strong vibes of that in the sources quoted.
I can't think of anything more racist than considering race when looking at university applicants. There really is no free lunch in this world.
i KNOW this is a crazy idea..
But; What if, instead: they tried to pick people that could and would graduate?
I still think admission lotteries are the way to go. Put the names of all applicants in a hat and draw out the freshman class. If someone can't afford the tuition or qualify for aid, that person is struck from the rolls and another name is drawn. There would be no limit to the number of schools an applicant could apply to. Details to be worked out...
maintaining the levels of diversity they would like to see.
Calling it diversity when they really mean the percentage of black students attending, just sounds phony.
The blunders of the Supreme Court rulings on Bakke and Grutter led to today.
@Althouse, it ain’t bullshit.
Isn't this just more dancing bear, this need to write some compelling, dramatic essay to entertain this group of strangers holding the key to your future? Dance, bear, dance! Minorities are being required to perform in a way that white applicants won't have to do.
This creates such an unfair burden on the minority applicant. What if the candidate, for whatever reason, chooses not to write about how race or ethnicity has had an effect? What conclusions will be drawn from a lack of a "story"?
Just require applicants to the elite schools to take a special online class (with required video camera for better “interactiveness.” ) The class would be taken their spring semester of the senior year of HS. Then the visible diversity of individuals can be quietly evaluated, you could even use AI. Then schools could accept the visibly determined racial mix they wanted.
If someone hired a ringer to take the class for them, they could be expelled for misconduct when they showed up and were seen to be Asian or white.
The goal of elite colleges is to have a class where visible race characteristics (stereotypes) match the percentages of visible race categories nationwide.
How did university admissions get this crazy?
I am sure that there will be many essays indicating the content of the applicant’s character rather than the color of his or her skin. That is what is important, right? Right? And academic potential? Well, the academy isn’t what it used to be.
Fifty years ago, I went to a private, non prestigious liberal arts college with the intention of advancing my education. There were requirements for a degree that extended across literature, history, philosophy, a modern language, and basic science. I took elective courses in business and economics. The literature classes were heavily influenced by the New Criticism, rather than pseudo Marxism (race, class, and gender) as would be the case today. That institutional education set me up for a lifetime of further self-education. So that liberal arts college did its job.
Ah, Paradise lost.
When the Supremes issued their opinion I predicted that the application essay was going to be a key battleground (or maybe a better metaphor is “threshing floor”). Huge effort would go into coding and decoding the desired attributes of skin color and ethnicity and geographical heritage and gender assignment; equally great energy would be devoted to describing —eloquently but not too floridly, originally but not absurdly— the travails of the applicant in overcoming, like a mythic hero, every racist and sexist etc obstacle.
Big money in that. And the cost of generating such tripe has fallen astonishingly far and fast, thanks to Chat GPT and its ilk.
Pass the popcorn.
"Scrambling" implies deceit?
Ann said
“ People are trying to follow that and it gives leeway to use race, so you fans of colorblindness are getting ahead of yourself accusing others of conspiracy.”
That is not how I understand it. It doesn’t give the schools the leeway to use race. Rather the applicants have the leeway to use their race in their essay as a part of presenting themselves and their accomplishments. The schools still must use the essay as part of an individual evaluation of the applicant, not as a side door way to continue on their diversity quotas.
You cannot legally achieve an illegal goal.
R C Belaire said...
"I still think admission lotteries are the way to go. Put the names of all applicants in a hat and draw out the freshman class"
That'll work a treat - as long as you don't mind picking your airline pilot and brain surgeon the same way.
I think Ann is correct but the NYT says the burden is on the student. Rather the burden is on the admissions office to translate the essays so they weed out the white and asian kids gaming the system.
"Yet the admissions advantage they get at many elite colleges for being children of alumni is far greater than that. They were nearly four times as likely to be admitted as applicants with the same test scores, according to the data, released Monday. And legacy students from the richest 1 percent of families were five times as likely to be admitted."
The real point of the elite college admissions charade is to ensure that the kids, and grandkids, of the Blue ruling elite get in. The racial stuff is just a smokescreen to divert attention.
diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry), ineqity (i.e. political congruence or "="), exclusion (i.e. affirmative discrimination) (DIE) #HateLovesAbortion
Some say school admissions should be solely merit based, but what do you recognize as merit? Is it not seriously meritorious to get through some of the school systems Black kids have no choice but to attend and still come out prepared for college? I'd say it is.
Which is tougher? Getting a 4.0 at an exclusive prep school or getting a 2.6 while growing up in terrible gang and crime ridden ghetto and going to a shit school full of violent, angry kids on drugs and cynical, beaten down teachers?
I still have an admission essay I wrote once upon a time. What a horrible thing! It makes me cringe to read it now. I pity the people who have to read a slew of these things.
Ann Althouse demanded "Spare me this bullshit."
It's patently obvious that leftists in the academe are conspiring illegally amongst themselves to devise cute ways to ensure that they can keep on using racist means to deny people of certain colors entry to their institutions.
That's not bullshit. That's systemic racism. It's appalling. And the next Republican Attorney General has a very good RICO case to bring against them. What they're doing is illegal in the United States.
Ann Althouse demanded "Spare me this bullshit."
It's patently obvious that leftists in the academe are conspiring illegally amongst themselves to devise cute ways to ensure that they can keep on using racist means to deny people of certain colors entry to their institutions.
That's not bullshit. That's systemic racism. It's appalling. And the next Republican Attorney General has a very good RICO case to bring against them. What they're doing is illegal in the United States.
"Rather the burden is on the admissions office to translate the essays so they weed out the white and asian kids gaming the system."
I'll have my kid write his essay in Ebonics.
I don't know who's funnier here: the people who act like slavery and Jim Crow should have no bearing whatsoever on how America conducts itself going forward, or those who are bothered the focus is specifically on blacks. Though they're not racists.
That's the old Patrice O'Neal joke: there's white racism everywhere, you just can't find the racists anymore - because everyone denies it's them.
Rackets are eternal.
Similar to Malcolm's (Jeff Goldblum) observation/prediction in Jurassic Park... Rackets will find a way.
Bob Boyd-
The purpose of society's subsidy of education is to produce the best graduates (best doctors, engineers, teachers, poets, HVAC techs...).
It is not to reward hard work, gumption, resilience, or any of other buzzwords used on letters of recommendation that high school teachers put into their Letters of Recommendation.
In our intelligence based economy, the child of 2 upper middle class parents is far more likely to possess the raw intelligence needed to succeed in undergraduate, technical, and professional training. There will always be the occasional Ben Carson or Clarence Thomas, but expecting the population of high performing people to mirror the underlying population is not realistic. Yet that is the aim of many in higher education.
The attempt to reward effort and gumption results in well described educational mismatch, further perpetuating stereotypes and delaying fair treatment for all and decreasing the overall quality of our graduates.
Let's keep our eyes on the goal.
Crack— Slavery and Jim Crow have had a huge bearing on how America conducts itself from the 1960s forward. You can’t just wipe out the last 60 years. You may not like the outcomes so far, but affirmative action in hiring and education for two generations and black political control of our major cities and many large states are a reality.
So how do you like it? Do you think reparation payments are going to work out better? Well, everyone likes a handout, but there has been plenty of juice in the system for black Americans for years. It is past time for the recipients to up their game. I am not seeing it in Chicago.
Ann said: "I quoted the language of the opinion. People are trying to follow that and it gives leeway to use race. . . ."
The opinion does NOT give schools leeway to use race in deciding whom to admit. At most, they can use an applicant's personal story as a factor in admissions; but they can't use the fact that an applicant is black or Hispanic as a proxy for the applicant's having supposedly endured adversity. Moreover, to the extent schools want to place heavy reliance on an applicant's personal story as an admissions factor, they obviously have to apply that criterion to all groups, not just those in preferred racial categories. Otherwise, they'll be subject to legal consequences. And giving a lot of weight to personal stories across the board will, over time, erode the school's reputations as places where the INTELLECTUAL elite go to be educated. It'll become more about having a good story than having good grades and test scores.
apartheid
I think the crux of the issue is that Harvard (Yale, Columbia, Stanford, etc.) won't be able to point to Affirmative Action as an excuse any more. So if they want to keep their racial mix and they admit a group of inner city kids that don't graduate, that's on Harvard (Yale, Columbia, Stanford, etc.). If they get sued over admissions by social climbing lunatic parents whose little Egbert didn't get admitted even though he's an academic star, that's on Harvard (Yale, Columbia, Stanford, etc.). If the student body gets upset because they don't feel the school is diverse enough, that's on Harvard (Yale, Columbia, Stanford, etc.).
This is what the NYT is moaning about, Harvard (Yale, Columbia, Stanford, etc.) will now be solely responsible for their admissions choices.
Asian parents everywhere should start thinking about legally changing their children's first names to Dequan and Shaniqua.
Have you watched the YouTubes of College educated black women with social science degrees testifying before congressional committees? Unbelievable!
Examples: Serena Williams can beat a male professional tennis player. You need a biologist to define "woman." We "endanger" trannies by stating there are only two genders.
Evidently a goal of higher education is to render black women as bubble-headed as "educated" white women. Hence, the need to keep the spigot open.
“The schools still must use the essay as part of an individual evaluation of the applicant, not as a side door way to continue on their diversity quotas.”
Quotas have been unconstitutional since the Court first addressed the question in Bakke in the 1970s.
Read up on the case law before pontificating. This is just ignorant.
It all depends on how hard SCOTUS forces the lower courts to live by the ruling itself. As of today, if Harvard produces the same biased result against Asians as it has the last many years, even with the new-fangled letting the student tell you about race, they will get sued again and for higher punitive damages. What needs to happen is for the universities to lose a few billion-dollar class action lawsuits. That might, at last, get them to do the right thing and set a minimum level of competence on grades/test scores and then do blind drawings out of a bin.
By the way, does anyone know the status of the case SCOTUS just decided? That lawsuit was dismissed, wasn't it, at a lower court level and only revived when SCOTUS ruled that Harvard had in fact discriminated illegally. So that case should go back to the original district court for a trial or financial settlement, right? Has it? I don't know- does anyone here know?
"Quotas have been unconstitutional since the Court first addressed the question in Bakke in the 1970s."
No one with an IQ above body temperature is actually fooled by this claim that quotas haven't been used since Bakke. They just weren't called quotas after Bakke. Today, what is going to happen most likely is that what quotas were called, affirmative action between Bakke and today, will again be renamed to something else that produces the same results. And that is what the colleges are conspiring to do, whether you are willing to admit it or not.
Jamie:
"compared to what?"
To not getting freebies for someone else's suffering.
Amadeus 48 said...
"Everyone likes a handout"
As long as you're talking about a handout, and not a debt to be paid by the government, you're not discussing what blacks are talking about.
That's the old Patrice O'Neal joke: there's white racism everywhere, you just can't find the racists anymore - because everyone denies it's them.
"I am so old that I can remember when most racists were white."
T Sowell.
Jersey Fled asked: "Somebody please explain to me why it is so important to have enough Blacks but not too many Asians."
Affluent white liberals like to live in a Potemkin world where blacks do just as well as whites and Asians. So they fix it so blacks are represented in places like Harvard in roughly the same numbers as they exist in the rest of America, and then the libs proceed to ignore all of the ugly, behind-the-scenes machinations necessary to achieve that Potemkin "equity" (machinations that include engaging in wholesale racial discrimination against Asian college applicants).
It's similar to how homelessness and a border crisis are huge, visible problems when a republican is president, but they become invisible as soon as dems are in power. The republican leaves office and, poof, the problem simply no longer exists.
I quoted the language of the opinion. . . . it gives leeway to use race.
What was quoted was the unelaborated nugget on which the wannabe-discriminators wish to rely. But let's quote a bit more (citations omitted):
At the same time, as all parties agree, nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. But, despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today. (A dissenting opinion is generally not the best source of legal advice on how to comply with the majority opinion.) “[W]hat cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. The Constitution deals with substance, not shadows,” and the prohibition against racial discrimination is “levelled at the thing, not the name.” A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.
Is there a good-faith argument that this passage as a whole allows admissions officers to "use race" for the specific headlined purpose of "maintaining the levels of diversity they would like to see"?
Josephbleau said...
"The goal of elite colleges is to have a class where visible race characteristics (stereotypes) match the percentages of visible race categories nationwide."
Current national race ratios:
White: 60.1% (Non-Hispanic)
Hispanic: 18.5%
Black: 12.2%
Asian: 5.6%
I call bullshit that is their goal, now and to the future.
West TX Intermediate Crude said...expecting the population of high performing people to mirror the underlying population is not realistic. Yet that is the aim of many in higher education.
You're not wrong there. But in that case, maybe this new system of giving admissions people more latitude to evaluate individuals as individuals will evolve be an improvement over simply requiring admissions people to hit numerical targets, given time.
A lot more goes into making a good doctor or teacher or poet than an IQ test and a GPA. Engineers and HVAC techs? Fuck. That's a whole other discussion. Let's keep our eyes on the goal.
Producing top quality professional is an important goal but so is social and economic mobility, if you want a stable society. Affirmative action as practiced has not produced social and economic mobility. Helping a small number of Black kids get into colleges isn't enough and doesn't help the vast majority of poor and working-class Americans of all races. It's actually a fig leaf. Falling economic and class mobility is one of the main reasons our society is coming apart.
Althouse:
"Quotas have been unconstitutional since the Court first addressed the question in Bakke in the 1970s."
And do you believe that the higher institutes of learning (gah, that was hard to write) *aren't* implementing quotas despite evidence to the contrary?
Althouse says, “Quotas have been unconstitutional since the Court first addressed the question in Bakke in the 1970s.”
But the lead sentence excerpted says, "Colleges and universities across the country are scrambling to find legal means of maintaining the levels of diversity they would like to see."
To me “maintaining the levels of diversity they would like to see” sure sounds like a goal, a quota or whatever synonym you want to substitute. There is no meaningful distinction. Our argument is with the arbitrary “levels of diversity they would like to see when we are explicitly told this discussion is about race, the one factor the court said cannot be the deciding factor, the basis for sorting. The Constitution is color blind. California’s is specific in that regard. Yet progressives openly conspire to work around the law not with it. That’s bullshit.
@Blackbeard: The real point of the elite college admissions charade is to ensure that the kids, and grandkids, of the Blue ruling elite get in. The racial stuff is just a smokescreen to divert attention.
Consider that the truth may be worse. The top schools are not just interested in admitting the legacy kids, they are interested in making the alum parents happy about the long-run consequences. But the academically-under-qualified legacy kids would form a pool at the very bottom of the class (perhaps along with academically-under-qualified athletes) if it were not for the presence of a different pool of even-more-academically-under-qualified kids. The smokescreen may be a side benefit.
Crack: "That's the old Patrice O'Neal joke: there's white racism everywhere, you just can't find the racists anymore - because everyone denies it's them."
It's really a matter of definition, isn't it? My son lives in a district in Uganda and has for ten years. The median income is $50 per month. 45% of the families have electricity. They have to pay to send their children to government schools. Obviously, most cannot afford it.
Their lot is not only a result of slavery and Jim Crow, but white racism - after all, the British didn't leave until 1962. /sarc.
By contrast, American Blacks receive a disproportionate amount of welfare, dominate multimillion dollar sports contracts, riot and loot with few repercussions, have benefited from affirmative action for decades. A few actually give back to the communities from whence they came, but mostly not.
If deploring black crime and black whining and 90% voting support for Democrats who support the status quo and tolerate intraracial violence makes me racist, I confess.
College admissions requirements are changing the way students see themselves and achievement, because they are openly putting value on things other than scholarship, perseverance, and a desire for success. How does a high school student who knows that his racial story will be a big part of whether they get into Harvard change his path? Does he start searching for victimhood everywhere? Does he start seeing himself as less than, or a white savior?
The way colleges do things filters down. What college admissions see as important, the high school student is going to have to see as important too.
When universities all state how they want a student body that “reflects” the state population, that is a de facto quota.
You’re lying to yourself if you think otherwise.
North of the 101 said....
" o if they want to keep their racial mix and they admit a group of inner city kids that don't graduate, that's on Harvard (Yale, Columbia, Stanford, etc.)"
The easier answer is to just find ways for them to graduate.
Quotas have been unconstitutional since the Court first addressed the question in Bakke in the 1970s.
Read up on the case law before pontificating. This is just ignorant.
Yes. Of course, it is horribly ignorant.
All the smart lawyers know that there are only de facto quotas in college admissions.
“Somebody please explain to me why it is so important to have enough Blacks but not too many Asians”
Simple answer - because racial preferences to various things are something that the Dems can give Black leaders in order to cement the loyalty of their constituencies for Dems. It doesn’t work with Asians since they are already over represented and are a less homogenous demographic. The Hmong don’t care how many slots the Han get. Or Indians. It’s a fairly blatant racial payoff for Blacks voting for Dems.
"Quotas have been unconstitutional since the Court first addressed the question in Bakke in the 1970s."
Isn't the issue here that colleges are trying to admit their desired percentage of AA applicants without calling that attempt at meeting what is well characterized as a quota what it actually is despite any Constitutional prohibitions?
Quotas have been unconstitutional since the Court first addressed the question in Bakke in the 1970s.
That doesn’t mean universities like Wisconsin don’t have them and apply them. Only instead of hard quotas explicitly stated like the 16 out of 100 quota that was at the core of Bakke universities like Wisconsin turned to soft quotas framed as “targets” within a range plus or minus. They replaced the word “quotas” with different words. Big deal.
Please don’t gratuitous insult people’s intelligence.
When I reflect on the way that universities' admissions processes are managed, and by whom, I have no fear whatever that deserving B/black students won't find slots somewhere.
When I was interviewing candidates for faculty and staff positions, all conversations and communications were supposed to be documented and kept confidential, until such time as they might become evidence in a lawsuit.
The irony is that the whole educational system is on the verge of collapse anyway--not enough HS grads in the pipeline, and too many of them uneducable by choice or mental deficiency.
"By clouding the question, the NYT burdens non-white applicants ...".
I am guessing that, while "non-white applicants" may well be operating under various cognitive disadvantages, reading the NYT is not chief among them.
"I was born a poor black child."
-- Steve Martin
>Ann Althouse said...
“The schools still must use the essay as part of an individual evaluation of the applicant, not as a side door way to continue on their diversity quotas.”
Quotas have been unconstitutional since the Court first addressed the question in Bakke in the 1970s.
Read up on the case law before pontificating. This is just ignorant.<
What's ignorant is to base your rebuttal on the naive notion that because they don't call their unconstitutional diversity quotas "diversity quotas," their diversity quotas can't be/aren't diversity quotas.
That's like the person in the sarcastic gun control cartoon who incredulously says, "How could this shooting have happened? This is a gun-free zone!"
'Evidently a goal of higher education is to render black women as bubble-headed as "educated" white women. Hence, the need to keep the spigot open.'
The Vice President nods in agreement...
Primary and secondary education is failing at its core mission, substituting activism and fear-mongering and brainwashing for teaching, telling students what to think instead of showing them how to research and arrive at reasoned conclusions. The racial hatred and war on masculinity has driven learners out of the system. I don’t see any hope for government schools that are run by ideologically driven unions. They are openly pushing parents out, the one force that has the most influence and desire for quality. Universities will be superfluous as the pipeline implodes.
Hey ChatGPT- Using the accompanying essay question write me an essay in the style of Dreams From My Father that will fool the admissions offices into thinking I'm black
Diversity (e.g. racism, sexism) has a handmade and progressive Democratic legacy.
the whole educational system is on the verge of collapse anyway
Academic dysfunction and progressive prices forced by SIC and federal loan guarantees.
What concerns me is CalTech dropping admission requirements like calculus. What are they trying to prove? MIT has already gone "Woke."
Yancey Ward said...
"So that case should go back to the original district court for a trial or financial settlement, right? Has it? I don't know- does anyone here know?"
Good question.
The only financial request by SFFA was for attorney fees and costs. I don't see in the final decision where the USSC addressed that. But other than that the case is settled in favor of SFFA, Harvard's admission policy was racially discriminatory and must end, and that's the end of it, the fat lady has sung, no return to a lower court as far as I can tell.
Everyone, regardless of skin color or ethnicity, grew up as a minority of one group or another. So, everyone could proclaim on their application that they overcame their minority status through determination, hard work, creativity, or whatever BS reasons admissions wants. Examples: Female in a family with more males; red hair in a school with few redheads; taller or shorter than the average of your peer group; fatter or thinner, more or less freckles, eyeglasses. You get the idea. Just state you're a minority without the specific details of the category and explain what positive you've done in life has enabled you to be the fabulous, well-rounded person and student you are today.
Michael K said...
"I am so old that I can remember when America wouldn't celebrate anything having to do with blacks, and whites were fine with that, but now we have holidays, and rap, and gangstas, and pride, as some blacks-who-shall-go-unnamed had nothing to do with any of it beyond spending their time making resentful ignorant whites feel better about how they've always thought of things."
T Soul
""Colleges and universities across the country are scrambling to find legal means of maintaining the levels of diversity they would like to see.""
Is blackface illegal? Seems like an easy way to “see” more “diversity”.
hombre said...
"Crack: It's really a matter of definition, isn't it? My son lives in a district in Uganda and,...their lot is not only a result of slavery and Jim Crow, but white racism - after all, the British didn't leave until 1962. /sarc."
That's pure racism. Well done. I hate waiting for clues.
"By contrast, American Blacks receive a disproportionate amount of welfare, dominate multimillion dollar sports contracts, riot and loot with few repercussions, have benefited from affirmative action for decades. A few actually give back to the communities from whence they came, but mostly not."
It sounds like you and your son live amongst people without understanding them - which is what racists do.
"If deploring black crime and black whining and 90% voting support for Democrats who support the status quo and tolerate intraracial violence makes me racist, I confess."
No need. You gave yourself away in the first paragraph.
"Black crime" is no different than any other, except the people are black. And you're obsessed with us, when you can't even stop the Biden family. "Black crime" also doesn't even come close to the amount of damage to us that white collar crime does, but we know what you're concerned about and why.
"Black whining" implies we have no beef, which is just a straight up lie. I mean, I'm talking to a racist right now, so that's an obvious beef.
And why would anyone vote with you when you admit you're racist? I left the Republican party because of people like you.
Your biggest problem is being stupid, not that you're focused on race.
If America was honest, she would've already paid reparations to blacks and been hating on Timothy Leary's influence, decades ago
Sorry, but nobody marched for this.
"By clouding the question, the NYT burdens non-white applicants,..."
Ah yes that awful burden of having to learn new ways to game the racial spoils system.
I weep at your burden.
"Quotas have been unconstitutional since the Court first addressed the question in Bakke in the 1970s.
Read up on the case law before pontificating. This is just ignorant."
So, a rose by any other name is a completely different plant.
Some say school admissions should be solely merit based, but what do you recognize as merit?
Which is why Sowell says, convincingly, that "merit" is not a useful metric (or perhaps "metric"). Performance is the best metric we have, he says, because although it provides as imperfect information as everything else on which we have to base decisions, it has the advantage of being observable.
I'd add that it has another great advantage: past performance tends to track closely with future performance in relevant areas.
IOW, SAT scores and grades track closely with college academic performance, and with job or career performance in related fields. I'm not saying they track well with performance in unrelated fields. My good grades in college say absolutely nothing about my skill in cooking or my ability to throw a dart, for instance.
(WRT the latter, my husband used to tell our kids when we were playing 21 on our living room real-dart dartboard, "The only number Mom needs is 2 - everybody, quick, hide on the 2! It's the safest place in the room!" He was not wrong.)
If Harvard just admitted people on merit, 0.76% would be black. It they'd limit it to low economic classes but still by merit, it's still 0.76%. The bell curve for rich kids turns out to be the same as for poor kids.
As long as you're talking about a handout, and not a debt to be paid by the government, you're not discussing what blacks are talking about.
As long as you're not addressing the billions of dollars already spent, by "the government"*, on efforts to mitigate the undoubted generational damage of the evil institution and of Jim Crow, you're not acknowledging reality.
* And "the government" has no money. You are talking about paying a literally unpayable debt using money extracted from people who had nothing to do with incurring that debt and who gain no present benefit from its existence in a past that we consider collective only because we Americans are unique that way: we consider that we share a heritage as Americans because of our willful embrace of shared Constitutional values rather than because of how long we've been occupying a piece of land.
Consider a different kind of debt. Say you save someone's life. Can that person ever repay you, in any currency that matters, other than by saving your life in return (which first requires that your life be endangered)? This is, I presume, the logic Kendi uses to claim that present and future discrimination against white people is the only appropriate response to past discrimination by white people. But, giving him the benefit of the doubt, he's starting from the assumption that this is a debt that can be paid. (Not giving him the benefit of the doubt, all I can come up with is that he just thinks it's absolutely correct to punish present and future white people in perpetuity for the sins of other long-dead white people, and devil take the societal costs.)
But how can such a debt be paid? In the saving-a-life example, absent the opportunity to save your life in return (run this analogy out to its endpoint and what I'm saying is, "absent the opportunity to enslave white people" - which not even Kendi can possibly say is where we ought to go, surely), the best that the saved person can do is to try to do right by you throughout the rest of your relationship. It's not full repayment. It's arguably not even close. But - believe me, I know this is going to sound flip, and I don't mean it that way - that's life. Life is unfair. Sometimes the unfairness is cosmic-level, but it exists nevertheless. Another ethnic example, which is not equivalent to slavery but is nevertheless a cosmic injustice: Neither I nor anyone else will ever get back the time and opportunities stolen from my ancestors by the Irish Penal Laws, and it's not fair, but it is reality. No reparations from the British to the Irish can make right what was done in the 18th century, so the Irish have moved on, not without resentment but at least with acknowledgement that there is no "solution" that actually solves anything.
Which is tougher? Getting a 4.0 at an exclusive prep school or getting a 2.6 while growing up in terrible gang and crime ridden ghetto and going to a shit school full of violent, angry kids on drugs and cynical, beaten down teachers?
I'm sympathetic to the idea that people (regardless of race) who have overcome obstacles should get some extra consideration, but isn't the question not "Which is tougher?" but "Who is better prepared for college?" Letting someone into a top university who hasn't learned how to write or do high school algebra is not doing him or her a favor.
And often the question is not this, but a choice between a less-qualified black versus a white from equally privileged (or unprivileged) backgrounds.
"If America was honest, she would've already paid reparations to blacks and been hating on Timothy Leary's influence, decades ago"
If that had been done, blacks born after the free money was passed out would now be demanding a check since they didn't get theirs. For ever and ever.
"only because we Americans are unique that way: we consider that we share a heritage as Americans because of our willful embrace of shared Constitutional values"
Shared heritage? Progressives don't believe that at all. It's "Diversity Uber Alles" for them.
"Colleges and universities across the country are scrambling to find legal means of maintaining the levels of diversity they would like to see."
The operative word in that sentence is "see".
Quick question: Can the blind be racist, and if so, how so?
-------------------------------------------------------------
University Director of Diversity looks out of office window at student body milling about on the campus lawn below and says to themself, "Needs more darkies."
@ James K said...Letting someone into a top university who hasn't learned how to write or do high school algebra is not doing him or her a favor.
I specifically said, "prepared for college."
It's not a question of "extra consideration", but what factors you choose to consider for all applicants.
The system we have is turning out too many entitled, arrogant, hyper-conformist incompetents, but they were all officially designated as well prepared to become arrogant, hyper-conformist incompetents, by the expert gatekeepers who were also chosen in the same way.
isn't the question not "Which is tougher?" but "Who is better prepared for college?
The question is, who is sufficiently prepared for college and more importantly, what will they do with the education they receive after college?
Perhaps they will simply go on to perpetuate the system that found them superior. Surely that must be the best of all possible systems.
One of the easier things to do in an essay would be to talk about the racial discrimination one of your parents endured and how it affected you, giving the clear impression that that parent is from one of the favored minorities even though your first or last name doesn't suggest that. How on earth are the colleges going to check up on that?
Colleges are relying on the white and asian kids not lying, while at the same time increasing the possible benefit of lying. And these have the models of Lizzie Warren and various other high-profile white people who faced zero consequences for their career-founding lies.
Unfortunately, the system will come down like load of bricks on the first few kids who get caught, because there is nothing that the Powers the Be love more than a pile-on onto a helpless victim--the preferred approach of cowards throughout history. But I still hope that we will rapidly reach the level of 20% of the white and asian applicants lying about race that I estimate it will take to crash the whole immoral admissions system.
Let's stop with this diversity myth.
The goal was never "diversity", or affirmative action based on "race, color, religion, or national origin" as mentioned in the early 1960 founding documents. Do colleges keep track of how many Baptists or Moslems, or Germans, or Bengalis, mixed races of various groupings, etc.? I doubt it. No, it was to increase Black representatives (clearly a racist policy) and later on Hispanic (whatever that is).
A recent Tampa Bay Times article seems to indicate that Blacks support affirmative action is not to increase diversity but to get a scale of economy at all colleges so that Black students can mingle with other Blacks on campus more easily and consistently. That is not diversity.
Perhaps someone should question whether Europe which doesn't consider affirmative action has a better plan. Or has racism increased in the past 40 or so years. 1950 to 1970 or so seem like the glory years as people followed MLK Jr's "content of the heart" thinking. And support for interracial marriage went from 4% to 85%. We seem more racist now and if we want to end racism we should consider how that happened. Creating Black Studies majors at as many colleges as possible doesn't seem like a solution.
"That institutional education set me up for a lifetime of further self-education."
I had a music theory professor who told us that his goal as a teacher was to position us with the fundamental knowledge we would need in order to enable us to continue our studies without him. I took his class in order to better understand the theory behind the Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization. My professor achieved his goal. At least with me, anyway.
With all due respect Ann, you state that "[p]eople are trying to follow that [opinion] and it gives leeway to use race, so you fans of colorblindness are getting ahead of yourself accusing others of conspiracy. Read and get your act together and spare me this kind of bullshit.
While admonishing the commenter to "read and get your act together", you could do some reading as well. One of the quotes you pull from the article states as follows: "Though barred from actively using race as a factor, they will still 'see' race in signifiers such as name, ZIP code and, perhaps most notable, what students say about themselves in their essays."
I do not believe that it is a fair interpretation of the Court's opinion to say that it is OK for universities to use names and zip codes as proxies for race. Nor do I think that a student revealing their race in an essay is sufficient for a university to make its admissions decision. As to your own comment, I do not believe that the Court's opinion allows universities the "leeway to use race" to make an admissions decision. Rather, it is "how race has affected" the student's life. Realistically, I don't know how the Court could ever hope to apply this standard, but I will leave that for another post. In any event, I think your reaction was a little overdone . . .
"That'll work a treat - as long as you don't mind picking your airline pilot and brain surgeon the same way."
Because...?
You do understand that to get licensed, pilots and brain surgeons would still need to demonstrate proficiency in their respective fields, right?
Let the lawsuits proliferate.
It will never stop. SDO was wrong.
James K said...
Which is tougher? Getting a 4.0 at an exclusive prep school or getting a 2.6 while growing up in terrible gang and crime ridden ghetto and going to a shit school full of violent, angry kids on drugs and cynical, beaten down teachers?
I'm sympathetic to the idea that people (regardless of race) who have overcome obstacles should get some extra consideration, but isn't the question not "Which is tougher?" but "Who is better prepared for college?" Letting someone into a top university who hasn't learned how to write or do high school algebra is not doing him or her a favor.
And I’m sympathetic too, however when a university accepts students whose preparation is lacking, it seems to me that (1) they need to level with the admitted individual that his or her preparation is lacking and therefore they should expect to spend (at least) an extra year in school taking remedial classes, and (2) the university should fund that extra year out of their own endowment.
rhhardin said...
If Harvard just admitted people on merit, 0.76% would be black. It they'd limit it to low economic classes but still by merit, it's still 0.76%. The bell curve for rich kids turns out to be the same as for poor kids.
------------
What is the proof for your statement? I think you are just making this up.
Compare running a mile on flat ground to running a mile up a steep hill. 4 minutes vs. say 5 1/2. Both are performance.
Who’s the better runner?
Most commenters on this blog probably were selected for and rewarded by the existing system. Of course they have a lot of faith in it.
Bob Boyd said...
…
Most commenters on this blog probably were selected for and rewarded by the existing system. Of course they have a lot of faith in it.
9/4/23, 5:13 PM
What ‘existing system’ are you referring to, in relation to those commenters here? I don’t know the age range, but it seems that the range of college entry could be anywhere from the 1960s all the way through 2010, or even later. Half a century of college graduates - and maybe many who did not partake of such a privilege (sic).
"Most commenters on this blog probably were selected for and rewarded by the existing system."
I was until I started working for a large corporation, assuming you're referring to a merit-based system and not one based on skin color or sex. But I'm a bit unclear on your meaning.
But in any case "affirmative action" is not about black students. That is just the excuse. Affirmative action is about eliminating objective evaluations of white students so that elite colleges can maximize total lifetime revenue and political power for their entering classes.
Odds are that you didn't get blocked from admission to the school of your choice by a black student who took "your" spot. You got blocked by a less-qualified white student whom the university thought would generate more power, prestige, or revenue. That's the materialist explanation.
The material conditions keep the ideology on a leash, but the ideology is still free to wander around a bit within those constraints. Right now ideology selects for those students who can best perform the shibboleths of contemporary American identity politics. Probably not the ideal way to select a managerial class--as we have been seeing since 2013 or so.
@lonejustice
In another exchange, Lynch warned that socioeconomic preferences were no substitute for racial ones—and appeared to suggest that class-based admissions help too many white and Asian students.
It "doesn't do the trick demographically," he said, because in states like Michigan, "there are many more people who are not underrepresented who are low-income."
Law School Administrators Huddle To Circumvent Affirmative Action Ban
The wrong people living in wrong states or wrong towns though *they* are not allowed to have *their* schools set at the level of diversity *they* would like to see. For those wrong people, *we* need to shove the level of diversity that *we* would like to see down their throats, no matter how many times they sell their houses and move a mile down the interstate.
No matter what race they are, the very rich don’t really care if their kids go to college at all. They give them sex, cars, drugs and travel at 13 and expect them to learn the business at 25 from personal tutoring when hedonism becomes old.
At the lower level, say F500 ceos and such, demand their kids go to ivies because they want them to be more competitive than their lessers, knowing that they will regress to the mean. By using legacy, lite sports, and admitting unqualified people, they can make their kids the new elite, and hobble the poor geniuses from the hicks. The ivies are for building lifelong team mates for your professional lifetime.
The poor study Physics at Michigan State the like, (excellent schools but not elite.)
@stlcdr
Yeah, you’re right. I with draw the comment.
Shared heritage? Progressives don't believe that at all. It's "Diversity Uber Alles" for them.
Indeed! I was speaking of our societal ideals, not what we're actually experiencing. Consider it my little cri de coeur...
What I was trying to say was that the main reason Americans - especially white Americans - are susceptible to CRT/DEI "arguments" (which tend to be assertions unanswerable unless you're willing to be accused of racism if you ask for evidence) that they continue to bear guilt for slavery and Jim Crow, and are obliged to continue to try to repay that unpayable debt, is that in the US, unlike in the rest of the world, we don't (or didn't use to) base our American-ness on whether we were here from the start of the country (or before).
"Odds are that you didn't get blocked from admission to the school of your choice by a black student who took "your" spot. You got blocked by a less-qualified white student whom the university thought would generate more power, prestige, or revenue"
Those able to pony up out of state tuition, for example.
For B/black students, perhaps some strategic insertion of Ebonics will help..assuming admin don't scour social media for pics and data.
Most commenters on this blog probably were selected for and rewarded by the existing system. Of course they have a lot of faith in it.
I got out of a Midwestern quarry town by a combination of mathematical skills and a strong work ethic. I don't know how many other young white people your attitude has prevented from doing likewise, but one is already too many.
"Indeed! I was speaking of our societal ideals, not what we're actually experiencing."
I wasn't being critical of your observation, I agree with it. My comment was a criticism of the left for their attempt to destroy our society.
r choice by a black student who took "your" spot. You got blocked by a less-qualified white student whom the university
The black student who took Allan Bakke's spot in UC, Davis medical school was convicted of second degree murder about 20 years later.
Blogger Rabel said...
"Most commenters on this blog probably were selected for and rewarded by the existing system."
My father left high school at 15 and neither parent went to college. When I was a senior in high school he told me to, "Forget about going to college. Get it out of your head."
He was invited to my medical school graduation and came.
rhhardin wrote:
"If Harvard just admitted people on merit, 0.76% would be black. It they'd limit it to low economic classes but still by merit, it's still 0.76%. The bell curve for rich kids turns out to be the same as for poor kids."
------------
Lonejustice asked:
"What is the proof for your statement? I think you are just making this up."
It is what common sense would suggest is the case, Lonejustice. However, I think it pretty fucking obvious that you didn't understand RHHardin's point- that the shape of the curves for rich and poor are essentially identical, even if shifted to the right for higher income brackets.
Michael K said...
That sounds like my In-laws side of the family.
Every one of them went to college on their own dime and are successful in their fields. You want it? You'll find a way.
Michael K said...
That sounds like my In-laws side of the family.
Every one of them went to college on their own dime and are successful in their fields. You want it? You'll find a way.
Michael K said...
That sounds like my In-laws side of the family.
Every one of them went to college on their own dime and are successful in their fields. You want it? You'll find a way.
Bob Boyd, no argument from me on your runner metaphor - that the hill runner has worked harder to do a slower mile. But there is still the question of whether your training has been optimized for the challenges you face.
Isn't it better for your hill runner to finish a race than to trip over her own feet in a flat race and fail? I'm talking about mismatch, of course. The idea that a studious young Black person who has worked really hard to get out of a terrible high school with the best possible grades can likely do just fine in a second or third tier school, and that person's kids will be well set up to succeed in the schools in which their parent would have struggled.
Gradualism sucks, especially in our instantaneous world. But is there another way that actually gets better results?
Free Manure yesterday:
You do understand that to get licensed, pilots and brain surgeons would still need to demonstrate proficiency in their respective fields, right?
This is not as reassuring as you think, FM.
DEI and CRT have taken over medical schools as much as they have law schools and undergraduate education. These malignancies are creeping into the board certifying bodies and they compare pass rates of minorities to ensure that their brand of equity is occurring.
Board certification is neither necessary nor sufficient to assure competency, but it does track to a degree.
I claim no knowledge of aviation but I have seen this creeping into medical establishment over my career. Caveat emptor.
"This kind of bullshit." "Get your act together."
Can you even count how many white students and job applicants you racially discriminated against all the while it was legal to do so? Do you feel any remorse for racially discriminating against us, legally or not?
Let's talk about that bullshit. You could have, at any time, chosen through your faculty senate to have identical racial discrimination imposed on your own employment status and pay scales. Your generation of academics made damn sure that didn't happen.
I was born the year reverse discrimination against whites became the law of the land. Unlike you, I have never enjoyed the right to seek academic admission or employment under a system where I wasn't structurally and legally discriminated against because of my white skin.
It was hardly "bullshit" for me to be disgusted by the spectacle of every black student being automatically given more money than every white student for teaching the same classes, as was the policy in my department, a policy imposed by preening white Baby Boomer faculty who, of course, exempted themselves from similar racial pay scales.
I realized just how depthlessly cowardly and corrupt your generation of academics were when I was forced to sit through a required lecture by a sub-par black student complaining that it was yet another type of oppression that she had been offered too many tenure track jobs. No white student in that room, no matter how accomplished, had much hope of getting one such offer. Unless we had the hook of a mommy or daddy who was a tenured academic, most of us were headed straight for the adjunct mill.
Did you even ever once suggest that, if it was right to do it to us, it should be right to revisit your tenure status under the same anti-white laws and unequal payment rules being imposed on your students? If these laws and rules were the right thing to do, why did they apply to me and not to you?
And now I'm supposed to play along with another discrimination racket while, what?
Pretending not to notice? Refraining from calling it bullshit?
You know how academic politics work. Why didn't you object then, and why insult us now?
Crack (12:49): "That's pure racism. Well done. I hate waiting for clues.... Your biggest problem is being stupid, not that you're focused on race."
"Racist. Racist. Racist." Race bait out. Race baiter grabs. Hook set. Insults, but little insight, follows.
Crack (12:49): "And why would anyone vote with you when you admit you're racist? I left the Republican party because of people like you."
Nah. I'm not a Republican. You left the Republican Party because you took the b!ue pill and decided to lie down for the leftists.
"We don't call it a quota any longer. So it's not a quota. It'll cost you a quarter mill in legal fees even to begin to contest that."
"We don't call it a quota any longer. So it's not a quota. Cost you a quarter mill in legal fees even to begin to contest that."
"We don't call it a quota any longer. So it's not a quota. Cost you a quarter mill in legal fees even to begin to contest that."
A quota mill ain't what it used to be.
Blogger The Crack Emcee said...
Burn it all down, because no one will ever listen, ever care, ever decide saving face isn't worth it; they will never stop thinking they're psychic and know what we think, while ignoring what we say - because they know better.
Burn it all down. If I have to live my whole life in my own country feeling like a harassed outsider, fuck it, burn the whole thing down and never look back.
It was never ours to begin with.
They wanted us as slaves.
8/26/20, 12:25 AM
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