quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Now, FoolishTook, take what you know of Beck's politics now, and imagine him back in the 50s-60s. Do you really think he would have been anything north of neutral on the matter?
I'm curious, Rakeesh, if there is anything specific Beck has said or done that make you confident you know what side he would have been on? Maybe I'm misreading you, but it seems like you're pretty sure you know how he would have behaved, had he been around back then.
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think the real loser in this whole mess is the musician Beck, because every time someone quotes Glenn Beck and says, "Beck said..." I think "I can't believe Beck would say that, he seems pretty cool... OH!"
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think that Affirmative Action is a positive thing, but it is not working the way it should.
Affirmative Action should be used to help the disadvantaged. It is primarily being used to promote diversity. This hardly promotes a "Color-Blind" community.
An interesting article on Affirmative Action on Stanford:
The fundamental unfairness and arbitrariness of preferences -- why should the under-qualified son of a black doctor displace the qualified daughter of a Vietnamese boat refugee? -- has led supporters to shift rationales in recent years. Instead of a remedy for disadvantage, many supporters now claim that preferences promote "diversity." This same push for "diversity" also has led Stanford to create racially segregated dormitories, racially segregated freshman orientation programs, racially segregated graduation ceremonies and curricular requirements in race theory and gender studies.
posted
Affirmative action for racial minorities is a pretty awful thing. It can only make other racial groups resentful AND the group that's supposedly benefiting resentful as well. After all, if you have a good reason to suspect that the only reason you have a job/are attending a particular school is because of your ethnic identity and not because of your qualifications, wouldn't you feel bad? In flagship state universities and elite schools, the grade and standardized test scores of non-asian minority students are lower than those of other groups. This leads to the issue of self-segregation: after all, if the minority kids just hang out only with each other, they can avoid contact with those who would make them feel ashamed about how they got in...
Richard Hernstein and Charles Murray made a point in "The Bell Curve" about something creepy that's happening in our society: cognitive stratification. This is why "class based" affirmative action can't really ever work too. Upper class people are smarter than upper middle class people, who are smarter than just middle class people and so on, due to the meritocracy. I mean how would it work -- would elite colleges select kids from working class backgrounds with high test scores -- i.e, the sort of people who probably would have been most likely to rise above their background anyway or are they going to select the sort of person who inherited the behavioral qualities (short sightedness, low conscientiousness, perhaps low IQ) that lead to being stuck in the working class/being poor?
Here's an alternative solution to affirmative action: we offer free housing/food stamps/health care to ANY woman who would have needed Affirmative Action to just to make a living. In return, SHE GETS HER TUBES TIED AFTER HAVING ONE KID. By the same token we make a deal with any male who would need affirmative action in order to find a job: You will get free health care, food stamps and housing so long as you get a VASECTOMY after fathering one child. This would be fair for everyone. Society would avoid being burdened with further people who are a net drain and those who need help just to live a decent live would get all the help they need. By the way, it seems that in the future a greater number of people will need to be receiving welfare:
Wouldn't it be fair of those citizens who are paying for this to demand from those receiving this help not to breed too much?
Posts: 668 | Registered: Aug 2010
| IP: Logged |
quote:In flagship state universities and elite schools, the grade and standardized test scores of non-asian minority students are lower than those of other groups. This leads to the issue of self-segregation: after all, if the minority kids just hang out only with each other, they can avoid contact with those who would make them feel ashamed about how they got in...
This is absurd. Yes, there are a lot of Asian students here (I'm at Cornell), and (for a large portion of them) they are here because they worked really hard, are motivated, have excellent work skills, and are excellent students. And while some of them hang out in cliques, they are typically organized by language. It helps to have someone to talk to who speaks your native tongue, I'm sure.
But for the most part (vast majority) the Asian students mingle with everyone else. We talk often about the (growing) percentage of them and how their experiences are different from Americans or Europeans. It is absurd to state that they "self-segregate" because they want to "avoid contact." It is not the case at all.
Ah, and then you go crazy. I don't know why I try.
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I was speaking of non-asian minorities(hispanics/blacks.)
At the elite universities, there's actually discrimination against Asian students. There's an unofficial quota against them. On the other hand, those types of schools tend to be something like 20% Jewish. It's okay to say "too many Asians" but it's not politically correct to say "too many Jews." (Going by merit alone would lead to more Asians/christian whites, less hispanics and blacks and Jews down to about 6%.)
Posts: 668 | Registered: Aug 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
The problem with the meritocracy is often people aren't rewarded based on merit. I went to college with a lot of rich kids. One did a crappy job and his dad donated money to the professor's research. I am sure that kid so deserved his grades so much more than the black kid who got in to "fill the quota." Also, even looking at success, I currently tutor kids. I would like to think that their parents paying $50 an hour are getting something for it. With some kids, I have seen huge improvements (Cs move up to As) with kids who still aren't that smart, but with that extra boost are able to handle the work. But a kid in the inner city whose parents can't afford that help, well, they would probably be sitting at Cs or even Ds, despite same intelligence level and same motivation on their parts. We also have some students who are brilliant- absolute undeniable geniuses so if you go with IQ genetic argument, they should be breeding tons except they are so lazy and have such bad behavior, they are getting horrible grades and frankly I have no pity for them.
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
Oops. Well, the same goes for non-Asian minorities. The ones that are here deserve to be here. And, from my experience (I can't find a break-down by race/religion), non-Asian minorities make up a fairly small percentage of the total student body.
At Cornell, minorities (self-declared African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans) make up 30% of the undergraduates and %16 of the graduates (link)
Have a link on that Jewish number? Because it sounds paranoid.
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
It would be interesting to see education practices among Asians compared to those from other groups. A lot of the asian friends I had in middle and high school had very strict parents when it came to education, especially if those parents immigrated here from another country.
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm amused by the assertion that we live in a "meritocracy," when very clearly nothing of the sort is remotely true -- for any meaningful definition of the word "merit."
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Tom, if I am lucky enough to be born to rich parents, I have merited all the advantages I get. And if I am born to poor, uneducated parents, I clearly did something to merit that as well.
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by scholarette: Tom, if I am lucky enough to be born to rich parents, I have merited all the advantages I get. And if I am born to poor, uneducated parents, I clearly did something to merit that as well.
It is sad that this is true.
I can't think of a good way to even the playing field. When it comes to school, there will always be those with less merit, money, and opportunity. Is this the childs fault? I don't think it is.
Likewise, I don't think the poor student with less opportunity is at fault for their condition.
And this is the problem with Affirmative Action. It is always going to be unfair to SOMEBODY.
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
Again, we need to take a look at the veil of ignorance. What world would you design if you didn't know which child you would be?
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
The other problem with eliminating affirmative action is that proving you weren't hired for being a woman or black is almost impossible. I once went to a meeting (where my voice meant nothing) discussing who to hire. An equal number of males and females had been invited to interview and all the applicants had pretty similar resumes. But in the interview portion, the women had somehow all managed to fail to impress. Things like too nice, not enough determination, not enough backbone, etc were cited. Some just missed the special something that was needed. My response at the end of this- I think the special something was a Y chromosome. Until that meeting I had always thought that the soft sexism didn't exist, that people were being overly sensitive. When I mentioned it to someone else, I was told women were one the hiring committee so it couldn't possibly have been sexist. So what if in the end, 6 of the 7 jobs were filled by men. Pure coincidence- after all at the resume stage, it was 50/50. If there had been an anti-female bias, it would have shown up there since the names were pretty gendered. I was pretty convinced after that meeting that the gender bias existed, the numbers look like a bias exists, but could you take them to court and prove it? I doubt it. Which is why sometimes quotas are the easiest thing to combat bias.
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
| IP: Logged |
That is an interesting experience you had. I have been involved in hiring as well, and I believe there is gender bias as well.
I worked for a big box computer store, and 90% of the positions we hired for in the computer hardware, software, networking, and home entertainment positions were male, while 90% of the people we hired for store greeters and cashiers were female. Granted there were more males applying for those positions that female, but still. I was the HR manager and performed all of the first interviews, but the decision on what department the person was to work in was determined by the sales manager.
I did have the final say in who was hired as cashiers. Again, almost all of those that applied for a cashier position were female.
We always had a good mix of minorities at our store as well now that I think about it. We never really gave it much thought though. We never determined who got hired based on skin color. It seemed to work out.
There are no Affirmative Action quotas though. That would be illegal. The only exception would be if it was ordered by a judge because the company had been guilty of discrimination. Now there are goals based ont he percentage of minorities living in the area. If a company does not reach their goal but makes a good faith search in order to reach that goal, they aren't penalized.
I sent out letters every month to about six local minority publications announcing that we had job positions open as part of our outreach program. I think in the three years I worked there we had only one person that came in due to those postings. She turned out to be an awesome employee and actually became our business sales manager after a year.
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by scholarette: The other problem with eliminating affirmative action is that proving you weren't hired for being a woman or black is almost impossible. I once went to a meeting (where my voice meant nothing) discussing who to hire. An equal number of males and females had been invited to interview and all the applicants had pretty similar resumes. But in the interview portion, the women had somehow all managed to fail to impress. Things like too nice, not enough determination, not enough backbone, etc were cited. Some just missed the special something that was needed. My response at the end of this- I think the special something was a Y chromosome. Until that meeting I had always thought that the soft sexism didn't exist, that people were being overly sensitive. When I mentioned it to someone else, I was told women were one the hiring committee so it couldn't possibly have been sexist.
This sort of phenomenon is psychologically pretty well recognized (see Why So Slow?, can't remember the author). Both men and women consistently, and subconsciously, rate men higher than women in situations where their performance has been carefully set up to be equivalent. The same resume with a man's name instead of a woman's will be consistently more successful at gaining notice.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Sa'eed: I was speaking of non-asian minorities(hispanics/blacks.)
At the elite universities, there's actually discrimination against Asian students. There's an unofficial quota against them. On the other hand, those types of schools tend to be something like 20% Jewish. It's okay to say "too many Asians" but it's not politically correct to say "too many Jews." (Going by merit alone would lead to more Asians/christian whites, less hispanics and blacks and Jews down to about 6%.)
Bullshit. Where are you getting this crap?
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Good timing, though. As Sa'eed ramps up the provocative topic generation phase of his operational lifespan, it's important to remember things like these (and the 'gay and female ghettos') to remind us, ultimately, who we are 'conversing' with.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: Bullshit. Where are you getting this crap?
Oh I can see the thought process- I suspect you understand it as well. Aside from addressing the complete and utter-bogiocity of his statements of fact, you can't reason with this character about the idea that "merit" insofar as it exists within his conception is not an adequate measure of academic performance to provide useful tools for actually choosing entering undergraduates for admission. There are enough 4.0+ students with excellent references and extracurricular work to comprise manyfold more entering classes than any of the ivy leagues have room for. People like him don't want to accept the idea that a state could possibly exist in which making all the right decisions for all the right reasons is pretty much right out the window- but even more, he needs to believe that the reason why it's not possible is because those pesky Jews are just getting him and his people down. He sees a number like "28% of Ivy Leaguers are Jewish," and looks at the number of Jews in the US, 2.2%, and his head explodes. Never mind that the 28% is part of a really small number, and that the 2.2% is a really big one, and that a number of really powerful social, economic, and geographic factors are in play. I'm sure his head doesn't explode with thoughts of a NY/CA conspiracy when he finds out that 30% plus of the student populations are probably from those states- (along with 30 percent of the US population.)
And, for the record, through the much of the 20th century Ivy League schools *had* an anti-Jewish quota system, which quite naturally furthered the corruption in the admissions process, and also led to increased attention to non-discriminatory institutions like NYU.
What I find interesting here is that essentially, the anti-Jewish quota system seemed to do nothing but make the Ivy Leagues a prized target for Jewish hopefuls, who obviously must work harder and in greater numbers to get admitted- thus the high numbers. So, good job buddy, your anti-semetic forbears can be proud to have made the Ivy League a bastion of brilliant Jewish students.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
