SCA5 - Bringing Affirmative Action back to school

[fatalrendezvous]

So there is a bill in California right now that has passed voting in the California Senate and is awaiting vote in the California Assembly. If it passes there it will be put to vote on California ballots come voting season.

In a nutshell, SCA-5 would allow colleges and universities to give preferential admissions to incoming students on the basis of race, gender, and a number of other non-academic (and primarily race-related) factors.

Its goal is to improve diversity in higher education in California because it's currently dominated primarily by Asians and Caucasians. While I understand the lack of diversity, it seems an awful lot like the return of affirmative action, which we got rid of years ago and for good reason.

I am of the opinion that admissions into higher education should only be merit-based. This essentially denies certain people the opportunity to attend college despite the fact that they may be qualified to, all because they were born a certain color, which wasn't within that person's control.

That's tantamount to giving a taller student a higher grade because there is a lack of tall people in higher education. No educator in their right mind would do that, because it's biased and ridiculous, and SCA-5 is not far off.

Just wanted to throw this out here to see if maybe I am missing something. I get the lack of diversity, I really do. But this is not the solution. A better solution would be to improve funding for K-12 schools that have primarily non-Asian and non-Caucasian students. I dunno. I feel like it fixes one problem only to create more.

 

[Minibit]

I think most minority people would rather get into schools on their own merits than because of their heritage.

 

[Kooriryu]

Protect Fairness and Equality (2008 PDF): In the United States, access to the American Dream is often framed as a race in which the swiftest runners win. Critics of affirmative action say that such policies give some runners an unfair head start in an otherwise fair race. At the same time, many supporters of affirmative action say we need these policies to assist "disabled" runners. In their focus on the runners rather than the track, both of these perspectives miss the point. Affirmative action isn't about advancing "disabled" runners, but about repairing damaged lanes and removing the barriers that block the pathways to opportunity that only some runners face. Policies that promote inclusion, such as affirmative action, are designed to equalize the conditions of an otherwise unfair race and give everyone a fair chance to compete.

via https://www.aclu.org/racial-justice/affirmative-action

For as many times he gets shit fucked up, does fucked up shit... he manages.
TIDBIT:

Finally, discrimination against people of color, historically, has had the real social impact of creating profound imbalances, inequities and disparities in life chances between whites and people of color. In other words, the consequences of that history have been visible: it has led to wealth gaps of more than 10:1 between whites and blacks, for instance (and 8:1 between whites and Latinos). It has led to major disparities in occupational status, educational attainment, poverty rates, earnings ratios, and rates of home ownership. Affirmative action has barely made a dent in these structural inequities, in large part because the programs and policies have been so weakly enforced, scattershot, and pared back over the past twenty years. So despite affirmative action, whites continue (as I document in my books,Colorblind, and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White) to receive over 90 percent of government contracts, to hold over 90 percent of tenured faculty positions, to hold over 85 percent of management level jobs in the private sector workforce, to be half as likely as blacks to be unemployed (even when only comparing whites and blacks with college degrees), and to get into their college of first choice at higher rates than African Americans or Latinos.

via http://www.timwise.org/2010/10/affi...ifference-between-oppression-and-opportunity/

Part of the reluctance, Poon reasons, is that acknowledging racism also requires that people who've been shielded from it recognize their corresponding racial privilege. That conflicts with the most enduring of American narratives—that the U.S. functions as a meritocracy, where rewards are the product of individual achievement, and achievement is the outcome of one's own effort. "It's a nice notion but it's just false. How have any of us been able to, out of the womb, up and advance on our own?" Poon asks.

This tension puts affirmative action and meritocratic ideals in opposition with each other, even though the most selective, elite colleges have never functioned as pure meritocracies. Elite private schools like Harvard, Yale and Princeton traditionally favored graduates of private prep schools, as well as the children of alumni and wealthy donors, setting aside their academic standards to welcome students they thought served their larger educational missions—which for much of their history has meant protecting the aristocracy.

via http://colorlines.com/archives/2012..._equity--and_may_kill_affirmative_action.html

https://www.aclu.org/files/images/asset_upload_file795_34806.pdf

An example of HOW this shit starts right at the first line of an application, the name field.

Tahani Tompkins was struggling to get callbacks for job interviews in the Chicago area this year when a friend made a suggestion: Change your name. Instead of Tahani, a distinctively African-American-sounding name, she began going by T. S. Tompkins in applications.

via The New York Times

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/...an-Suddenly-Job-Offers-Come-Tumbling-In-Video

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/black-names-a-resume-burden/

Even the National Bureau of Economic Research wet their feet in this puddle http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html

Fuck, that's JUST starting in on the name portion of an application and fuck it, while I'm on names in the first place

-----

Hell, this somma shit too

"Neither Black Nor White: Asian Americans and Affirmative Action" by Frank. H. Wu

Harvard Targeted in U.S. Asian-American Discrimination Probe from Bloomberg.com

The Retreat from Race: Asian-American Admissions and Racial Politics
by Dana Y. Takagi

 

[Cammeh]

Koori makes the good points.

What Affirmative Action does, is to open opportunities to deserving applicants of colour who otherwise would not have been admitted on the basis of their race or even their perceived race.

What Affirmative Action DOES NOT do, is just 'hand out' welcome letters to any and everyone of colour, just to meet a quota.

Be sure, if affirmative action will do is tell students of colour, "Hey, you should apply. You have a good chance." Right now, without it, they think: "I have to change my name/hide my heritage/sound as white as possible." So, with more diverse students applying, the school will be able to focus more on the grades and the rest of the application and not allow the subjective 'name selection' that currently goes on.

 

[Kooriryu]

All I do is just post shit from sources that are from Not Me 'cuz everyone wanna get their underpannies up in a pepperoni pretzel twist since I don't platter it up with nice garnishes. Didn't even have to go deep into the interbutts for these links, they're all from shit that's fairly new for an 'old' topic.

But points I do wanna make tho:

Situations don't happen in a vacuum; there's context, history, history of application, history of whatever-ass relevant fuckin' shit that makes up, adheres to, is pertaining of the current situation all got hands dirtied in that situation.

Folk abuse systems, ch'yeah bruh no shit. Not really my own point but you know that shit is gonna come up anyway.

Take whatever rose-tinted glasses'n shit off and look at shit for all its corncobbled, stray hair, questionable white speckled lumpy glory.

Oh yeah, also just to stay in character:

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL AHUHUHUHUHUHUHUHUHUHUHUHUHU

lol k done

Oh, actually, Cammu you made me think of this: