I’m still swamped with the move and book stuff, so please let me lay out my position here with far fewer citations than I would usually provide. All things being equal, I’m fine with some race-conscious admissions in our actually-existing university system, though under a theory of reparations for slavery, not the bizarre jerry-rigged “diversity” sham.
I don’t think you’re up to date on admissions preferences and rates at Amherst, Brown, etc... these places are just as bad. Especially in recent years.
Those who have just gone through it -- especially white males in STEM -- know this. As do the college counseling operations at the high schools they’re coming from. The latter are scrambling and advising white males to take up a sport at high level beginning in 9th grade to have a chance.
I don’t think most people have a clue how skewed this system has become. It’s discrimination on steroids since George Floyd.
I agree wholeheartedly with this!! “Individual ability rules. I would much, much rather be a 120-IQ graduate of a nondescript state school than a 100-IQ graduate of an Ivy League school.”
But how can you suss this out when hiring, let’s say...? You can’t ask for an IQ test. Transcripts have become meaningless, there’s so much grade inflation. Case interviews?
I know it can be scary, but court opinions are just essays, with citations to exact authority that readers (including us lawyers) can skip. The Chief Justice's lead opinion is both pretty readable and sensible; but Justice Thomas's concurrence is a master class in the history of the 13th and 14th amendments, and his difference of opinion with Justice Jackson (and hers with him) is as illuminating as it gets on how different, smart and black individuals can disagree strongly about our nation and our constitution.
"This all hangs on the basic broken thinking about education that I discussed in The Cult of Smart: we demand that our education system be both a ladder of success, a sorting system that creates a hierarchy of excellence, and a great equalizer, a way to make society more equitable. These are flatly contradictory purposes."
It would appear to be contradictory, unless you're able to synthesize a new ideology that equates personal success (or a small elite within a bigger group's success) with some kind of wider social justice.
I wrote in my Substack last week about how media representation has become a like a holodeck substitute for actual progress, encouraging people to find avatars of themselves on the screen or in the page, and then measure box office revenue as a way to validate themselves: https://salieriredemption.substack.com/p/affirmation-art-and-box-office-politics.
Similar philosophy here: let me—or let us—be your champions. Through my rise, you too will be uplifted, even if only emotionally so. And if you can't be happy for me, then you're all backwards (many elite-educated minorities have disdain for their communities too).
“Affirmative action is a system in which students of color who would not ordinarily gain entry to a given college are given a slot” Is this necessarily true? I was under the impression that it also means, given two candidates of equal ability, preference would go to the person of color. Ivies perennially get more fully qualified candidates than they can accept, thus race can be a determining factor among the qualified. But I don’t know how it actually works in the real world.
Your use of the term 'enviable' in this piece harms another part of your argument. Would you really rather be the 120 IQ state school grad vs the 100 IQ ivy leaguer?
You also overuse the term generally: you always leave me wondering who, exactly, envies these people. I sure don't. Do you?
Nothing, absolutely nothing, is moral, ethical or natural in consideration of admission, acceptance, hiring, promotions, rewards etc... other than merit. Any other criteria is corrosive, unnatural and results in a spiral down of lower human achievement that dooms the entire system to failure.
If we want to see better outcomes for groups, the effort has to be at the very front... improving early childhood development for the people in those groups.
The fact that Asian Americans have better socioeconomic outcomes than do whites in the US, completely shatters the myth of modern racism being responsible for lower socioeconomic outcomes for other minority groups... and also shatters the myth that blacks and Democrats that exploit them, can rely on the excuse of historical oppression from 150+ years ago to get a unqualified boost to the head of the line.
The fact is that multiple decades of failed liberal and bonehead globalist policies have decimated the economic opportunity within the black community at the very time the people of that community were poised to advance from the poor to the middle-class. Pushing the unqualified to the head of the line is just deflection for those that need to take responsibility for the harm they have caused.... by piling on more harm.
It will be interesting to see if the change in admission practices at the Ivies drifts to the point where they resemble the UC system (meaning something like a 40% Asian student body). If that happens, given the way that our country works, it basically means we're going to have a plurality Asian ruling class within 1-2 generations, for exactly the same reasons that Jewish people became massively over-represented among the elite once anti-Jewish quotas at the Ivies finally ended.
A human female I recall, perhaps the only human I ever could have loved (she had an incredibly light touch and could even get the most wary and skittish ferals to come up to her to get pettins) remarked that feminists have a gift for wanting it both ways. They wanted all the privileges associated with being female, but also the privileges associated with being male.
Well, it seems that the phenomenon of wanting it both ways is not limited to feminists, although we do hear some bromides about "our diversity is our strength!"
The university I teach at has an acceptance rate of 85% and just sent out a message about how we will come together to discuss how this decision will impact us and "the work that we do." Had to laugh -- not at all is the answer! Wish there could be some honesty in the discussion of this topic.
The bigger question is why these highly selective private colleges have access to federal and state funding when they can actively discriminate based on class status (and they are!). When you look at the year over year pell grant % of students at these schools, they hover around the same rate. Highly selective colleges know the minimum % of pell grant recipients they need to let in to make themselves look good and do just that (there are exceptions - Amherst for example seems to be putting their money where their mouth is). They are placing these kids into very specific admission’s pools from the start.
They hide behind “needs blind” phrasing to pretend they aren’t actively discriminating against low ses kids but use “hs rigor” and zip codes as proxies. More so, the poor UMR they are letting in are kids that did programs like Prep4Prep, Questbridge, or were lucky enough to get a scholarship to a private high school. At the end of the day, they don’t want to take risks on diamonds in the rough bcs it will hurt their grad % and their ranking. There is no such thing as “equity” or “dei” in the admissions process. No idea why libs are getting so up in arms about all of this. It’s always been rigged.
This argument is a colossal red herring. When the cost of a university education is at ahistorical high, and the value of said education is at a historical low, who is zooming who here? Do you really want to saddle preferred minorities with significant debt in exchange for a liberal arts degree in the passing social fad du jour?
Employers are not vested, universities and government are engineers of the grift. Good luck to students and families. The wealthiest happiest guy i know is a high school drop out who started a lawn mowing company.
If you want a middle class life, which is all most of us can ever hope for, you just need to go to college, any old college really. Of course what's more concerning is that significantly less black and brown students even apply to college and when they do they are often these for-profit scams. Why not just make sure everyone has a comfortable life and has access to middle-class jobs if that is their goal?
The legacy argument is such a dodge. If people are offended (as I am) by legacy admissions, tell your legislature to ban it (for public schools) or condition funding on its abolition (for private schools).
I don’t think you’re up to date on admissions preferences and rates at Amherst, Brown, etc... these places are just as bad. Especially in recent years.
Those who have just gone through it -- especially white males in STEM -- know this. As do the college counseling operations at the high schools they’re coming from. The latter are scrambling and advising white males to take up a sport at high level beginning in 9th grade to have a chance.
I don’t think most people have a clue how skewed this system has become. It’s discrimination on steroids since George Floyd.
I agree wholeheartedly with this!! “Individual ability rules. I would much, much rather be a 120-IQ graduate of a nondescript state school than a 100-IQ graduate of an Ivy League school.”
But how can you suss this out when hiring, let’s say...? You can’t ask for an IQ test. Transcripts have become meaningless, there’s so much grade inflation. Case interviews?
Another "For more" cite to check out: The actual opinion. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf
I know it can be scary, but court opinions are just essays, with citations to exact authority that readers (including us lawyers) can skip. The Chief Justice's lead opinion is both pretty readable and sensible; but Justice Thomas's concurrence is a master class in the history of the 13th and 14th amendments, and his difference of opinion with Justice Jackson (and hers with him) is as illuminating as it gets on how different, smart and black individuals can disagree strongly about our nation and our constitution.
"This all hangs on the basic broken thinking about education that I discussed in The Cult of Smart: we demand that our education system be both a ladder of success, a sorting system that creates a hierarchy of excellence, and a great equalizer, a way to make society more equitable. These are flatly contradictory purposes."
It would appear to be contradictory, unless you're able to synthesize a new ideology that equates personal success (or a small elite within a bigger group's success) with some kind of wider social justice.
I wrote in my Substack last week about how media representation has become a like a holodeck substitute for actual progress, encouraging people to find avatars of themselves on the screen or in the page, and then measure box office revenue as a way to validate themselves: https://salieriredemption.substack.com/p/affirmation-art-and-box-office-politics.
Similar philosophy here: let me—or let us—be your champions. Through my rise, you too will be uplifted, even if only emotionally so. And if you can't be happy for me, then you're all backwards (many elite-educated minorities have disdain for their communities too).
“Affirmative action is a system in which students of color who would not ordinarily gain entry to a given college are given a slot” Is this necessarily true? I was under the impression that it also means, given two candidates of equal ability, preference would go to the person of color. Ivies perennially get more fully qualified candidates than they can accept, thus race can be a determining factor among the qualified. But I don’t know how it actually works in the real world.
Your use of the term 'enviable' in this piece harms another part of your argument. Would you really rather be the 120 IQ state school grad vs the 100 IQ ivy leaguer?
You also overuse the term generally: you always leave me wondering who, exactly, envies these people. I sure don't. Do you?
Nothing, absolutely nothing, is moral, ethical or natural in consideration of admission, acceptance, hiring, promotions, rewards etc... other than merit. Any other criteria is corrosive, unnatural and results in a spiral down of lower human achievement that dooms the entire system to failure.
If we want to see better outcomes for groups, the effort has to be at the very front... improving early childhood development for the people in those groups.
The fact that Asian Americans have better socioeconomic outcomes than do whites in the US, completely shatters the myth of modern racism being responsible for lower socioeconomic outcomes for other minority groups... and also shatters the myth that blacks and Democrats that exploit them, can rely on the excuse of historical oppression from 150+ years ago to get a unqualified boost to the head of the line.
The fact is that multiple decades of failed liberal and bonehead globalist policies have decimated the economic opportunity within the black community at the very time the people of that community were poised to advance from the poor to the middle-class. Pushing the unqualified to the head of the line is just deflection for those that need to take responsibility for the harm they have caused.... by piling on more harm.
It will be interesting to see if the change in admission practices at the Ivies drifts to the point where they resemble the UC system (meaning something like a 40% Asian student body). If that happens, given the way that our country works, it basically means we're going to have a plurality Asian ruling class within 1-2 generations, for exactly the same reasons that Jewish people became massively over-represented among the elite once anti-Jewish quotas at the Ivies finally ended.
A human female I recall, perhaps the only human I ever could have loved (she had an incredibly light touch and could even get the most wary and skittish ferals to come up to her to get pettins) remarked that feminists have a gift for wanting it both ways. They wanted all the privileges associated with being female, but also the privileges associated with being male.
Well, it seems that the phenomenon of wanting it both ways is not limited to feminists, although we do hear some bromides about "our diversity is our strength!"
The university I teach at has an acceptance rate of 85% and just sent out a message about how we will come together to discuss how this decision will impact us and "the work that we do." Had to laugh -- not at all is the answer! Wish there could be some honesty in the discussion of this topic.
“Stop taking their horseshit social justice rhetoric at face value. It just makes you look like a mark.”
Fantastic quote Freddie. A million times this.
The bigger question is why these highly selective private colleges have access to federal and state funding when they can actively discriminate based on class status (and they are!). When you look at the year over year pell grant % of students at these schools, they hover around the same rate. Highly selective colleges know the minimum % of pell grant recipients they need to let in to make themselves look good and do just that (there are exceptions - Amherst for example seems to be putting their money where their mouth is). They are placing these kids into very specific admission’s pools from the start.
They hide behind “needs blind” phrasing to pretend they aren’t actively discriminating against low ses kids but use “hs rigor” and zip codes as proxies. More so, the poor UMR they are letting in are kids that did programs like Prep4Prep, Questbridge, or were lucky enough to get a scholarship to a private high school. At the end of the day, they don’t want to take risks on diamonds in the rough bcs it will hurt their grad % and their ranking. There is no such thing as “equity” or “dei” in the admissions process. No idea why libs are getting so up in arms about all of this. It’s always been rigged.
This argument is a colossal red herring. When the cost of a university education is at ahistorical high, and the value of said education is at a historical low, who is zooming who here? Do you really want to saddle preferred minorities with significant debt in exchange for a liberal arts degree in the passing social fad du jour?
Employers are not vested, universities and government are engineers of the grift. Good luck to students and families. The wealthiest happiest guy i know is a high school drop out who started a lawn mowing company.
If you want a middle class life, which is all most of us can ever hope for, you just need to go to college, any old college really. Of course what's more concerning is that significantly less black and brown students even apply to college and when they do they are often these for-profit scams. Why not just make sure everyone has a comfortable life and has access to middle-class jobs if that is their goal?
This was really well done. Concise and very persuasive.
The legacy argument is such a dodge. If people are offended (as I am) by legacy admissions, tell your legislature to ban it (for public schools) or condition funding on its abolition (for private schools).