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2/25/2003 08:25:00 PM | Timothy Stupid Statements on Affirmative Action (or, how to wrongly cry 'racist'!) Nick says: "So I repeat: affimative action is a good idea on principle, but it is not fair so long as it deprives poor whites of opportunity in favor of middle-class minorities. Michigan's 20 points for skin color is unfair and racist in its gross simplicity." Sure, under Michigan's policy you get 20 points for being a minority. But you also get 20 points for being economically disadvantaged. OOPS. Who is actually being grossly simplistic and ignorant? Whatever the problems with this policy, it seems on the face stupid to argue that middle class blacks benefit at the expense of poor whites. If I'm wrong, tell me so, but here's the University of Michigan on their admissions policy: "Fully 110 points are awarded for academic factors. While students who are underrepresented minorities can earn 20 points in this system, the same 20 points can be earned by those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged or who attend a high school that serves a predominately minority population, regardless of the student's race (however, the 20 points can only be awarded once). Geographic diversity is important, and students from Michigan's largely white Upper Peninsula earn 16 points." Poor whites are no worse off vis-a-vis blacks if there had been no point system boost for either of them. Both are probably better off for getting that boost vis-a-vis the rest of the pool. The only thing I can see someone arguing is that poor whites should get more points than middle class blacks, but this would still leave a 'simplistic' point system of some type in place. I don't see how you could argue that giving middle class blacks and poor whites the same boost deprives "deprives poor whites of opportunity in favor of middle-class minorities." If Nick's logic applies elsewhere, I can't see how it applies here. I might give Nick the benefit of the doubt except he also made this statement: "Bush's "top 10%" rule seems intended to force the state universities of Texas to accept more students from these poor high schools. Instead of looking at statistics on minority enrollment at UT, I would like someone to show me that more students were being accepted from Texas's poor, racial-minority-dominated high schools before the policy before I believe it isn't an improvement over Michigan's methods." The reason why Texas' 10% policy works to put minority students into college is because the schools are largely segregated! If you want to argue that Michigan should segregate its primary and secondary schools and adopt a 10% system on the college level, all to avoid a point system at its state university, Ok... Otherwise don't talk to me about how Texas' policy is better and should be applied elsewhere. Texas' policy does not explicitly take into account race, but the top 10% is used as an even more crude proxy than race is. Adopting the 10% policy in Texas does not make much educational sense unless your goal is to have the result of more minorities accepted in to College. I think a better, fairer policy, and one that (suprisingly) takes into account individual circumstances as well as race and disadvantage, is simply to have some form of affirmative action. I think this is true even in Texas, but it is obviously the case in most other states. (and yes, I do not like being impolite and calling these statements stupid and ignorant, but someone wrongly put the label 'racist' on policies I largely think are defensible and anything but that. I think this is especially the case when we're talking about a topic everyone knows about and has had time to form an opinion, which I hope would an informed one. I am not saying that about the rest of Nick's statements or judging his other arguments now. I will say I especially liked some of Scott's statements.) P.S. Nick mentioned "conservative black thinkers like Thomas Sowell who really did pull themselves up by the good old bootstraps." This memory is from a long time ago (so I risk being corrected by Observer posters), but didn't Sowell write a book called Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby? Whatever Sowell's stance on and concerns about the problems he faced from benefiting from affirmative action, it hardly seems compelling to say we don't need affirmative action by pointing to how he pulled himself "up by the good old bootstraps." perma link |
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