vraiblonde said:
There was a study done in California, re affirmative action. I'll try and run it down and post a link. They said that kids who get in on racial preferences rather than academic achievement typically drop out or get kicked out after freshman year.
Which makes sense because, as you indicated, if the kid can't make it in high school, how are they going to make it through a top-notch college? They'd be better off to send them to community college or trade school instead.
Many years ago, I started college life at a nearly all-male engineering school. One of the common topics and catch-phrases was "The Ratio" - the ratio of men versus women. It stood at somewhere between 7 to 8 men for every woman.
In my second year, the school decided that they needed to admit more women, but, since they didn't *GET* nearly as many applicants - they had to lower their academic standards - lower GPA, lower SATs. The next freshman class had a "ratio" somewhat more promising, at about 4:1.
By the NEXT SEMESTER, the number was closer to the school average - most of these new students had dropped out. This posed a bit of a problem, because students don't typically transfer INTO four-year schools like this one, mid-way through their college experience. By losing a large portion of the freshman class, they also lost *money*, because the next three years, for that class would continue to have a diminished class size, due to the unforeseen dropouts.
While I fully understand the need to guard against unfair hiring practices - affirmative action, after forty years, really doesn't have the broad success once imagined. The idea of having a generation of successful minorities going back to their communities, providing hope for dreams of future success, being a role model - that didn't work. One of the main selling points of affirmative action is that poor disadvantaged youth need to believe in themselves to succeed, and seeing so many of their own would end the cycle. After a generation and a half, it's not changing.
And my story illustrates what's wrong with the premise. College is about academics. That's it. If it were about diversity, grades and SAT scores would be *IRRELEVANT*. We would admit based strictly on race, gender, ethnicity without any regard for academic achievement.
There's something to be said for the whole hiring/recruitment process - people tend to be biased in favor of persons like themselves. Geeks hire other geeks. Whites tend to hire whites. Even racial minorities tend to favor their own - this is a natural, non-racist bias - we think others like ourselves are good at what they do.
Affirmative action strives to open the door wider, so that this natural bias doesn't shut the door on people who ARE in fact, qualified. That is what it *should* do.
But - it doesn't. In the new goal of "diversity", diversity itself is the goal. Rather than admit students who can meet the academic challenge (WITHOUT bias over race or gender), having the diversity becomes the goal. So it's a bit of conceit - although the idea is to provide justice for *qualified* individuals who are discriminated against IN SPITE of their credentials, the solution is to promote those without the credentials to promote 'diversity'.
It's not that it isn't a noble idea - it's just that someone moved the goal posts along the way. As someone pointed out earlier, you don't have dwarves in the NBA, because the object is to WIN GAMES - not to be shiny happy people holding hands. College is for academics - not for the social experience. Business is for making profit and competing successfully - not for social engineering.
Advancing someone who is NOT qualified in the name of diversity is false to the goals of affirmative action. It's every bit as racist as the social evil it wishes to dislodge.
: You'd think someone just discovered a gay person for the first time in 2000 years.
But I think the 2004 election should have showed Gays what they're worth in the eyes of most Americans - they aren't liked or condoned by Republicans and most Democrats, and they're just a cheap source of votes to other Democrats.
