Nearly 2/3 of American adults believe colleges & universities should not consider race at all in admissions decisions, with only 1/4 saying race should be allowed along with other factors.
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I think we need some sort of system like this. The concept of equitable opportunity helps explain why. If we take a generic rich kid and a generic poor kid, who is going to have more and better opportunities as they grow up? Definitely the rich kid. If the poor kid goes to a run of the mill shitty public school, and the rich kid to a college preparatory academy, but they end up having the exact same academic performance – who is more deserving of a seat at a coveted university?
This is what affirmative action was trying to unsuccessfully address. We can’t just take into account the final state, we need to also consider the initial state. The poor kid in my example started a lot lower but got to the same final state. They “grew” more than the rich kid. But what if the rich kid is also capable of that? They could be capable of the same growth, but it doesn’t show because they started out better positioned. So who do we pick?
There really isn’t a fair answer, and there’s multiple different philosophies you could use. In light of there being no good answer, I think instead we have to improve the admissions system itself. We need it so that these two kids don’t have to compete against each other. And, that whoever gets the seat doesn’t have significantly different outcomes than the one who does.
Easier said than done, I know. Maybe this looks like requiring schools to make 33-50% of their admissions for a particular major come from blind picks. If you meet a certain baseline performance, you’ll be entered into the pool. Direct applications would still be possible, but the random admissions would help equalize things. High performers can still apply and bypass that lottery.
And it’s important to keep in mind – cream rises to the top. I was devastated when I didn’t get into MIT or Stanford for engineering. I thought it was a major blow. Now though? I’m glad I didn’t get in. I wouldn’t change my experience at the University of Illinois for anything. I suspect if I had gone to Minnesota instead, I’d be saying the same about them too. The concept of a perfect university is heavily overblown to high schoolers, because of course, the ivy league stands to benefit from it. Above a certain baseline quality of education, a good student will do well no matter where they go. They’ll still get jobs at Fortune 500 companies and the big names.
(And frankly, a state school experience could be just what a high flier needs to become grounded and grow into an adult. They need to learn that education isn’t their whole life. I’m totally speaking from personal experience.)
Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk haha – sorry for the ramble!
Great response and I agree 100% 👍
It would be far more equitable to look at the students’ socioeconomic status, whether that is looking at parental income, schools they went to, or community demographics, than it is to look at race explicitly. Someone who grew up disadvantaged, in a poor school district, with a family who didn’t care about education (which tends to but doesn’t always correlate with poverty) is going to be starting off on a much lower rung on the metaphorical ladder regardless of their race.
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They ideally shouldn’t know anything about the student other than their academic achievements. You could maybe argue for certain scholarships based on household income but everything else just perpetuates division. Most things that people attribute to race can be much better attributed to poverty anyways.
Interesting take that seems reasonable, but with even a small amount of reflection one can realize, like most things, it is never simple.
I’ll even argue that the idea that affirmative action perpetuates division is purely political propaganda, that it is a lie that is a projection of the lie itself causing that very perpetuation of division, with the intention to mask the reality that discrimination based on race, sex, sexual orientation, and even religion does still affect almost every aspect of our society.
How do you account for income disparities that are rooted in the very historical systemic racism that is consistently reflecting itself across the entire spectrum of modern (American centric in this post’s context, but applicable almost everywhere) society? Being poor equates to being disadvantaged, while being poor and black/latino/other equates to being disadvantaged and also racially stereotyped by those who are part of and/or maintain wealth and power dynamics in the first place.
Affirmative action is not just a meme that exists for politically conservative white people to use as a foil to blame for their problems. Affirmative action is a negotiated strategy that is trying to improve equality of opportunity among the racial disparities inherent in societal structures that somehow still hold on to racial inequalities despite decades of reform.
I’d rather put more time and effort into discussions and support on these topics towards formulating solutions that are inclusive of helping those affected by wealth inequality AND those affected by systemic racial inequality, rather than being dismissive of racial inequality as an active point of consideration.
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Society perpetuates division. Nobody can deny people in society are treated differently depending on their skin color or accent or sexual orientation.
