Campus diversity suffers under race-blind policies

[usregimechange]

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) -- Fifteen years ago, California voters were asked: Should colleges consider a student's race when they decide who gets in and who doesn't?

With an emphatic "no," they made California the first state to ban the use of race and ethnicity in public university admissions, as well as hiring and contracting.

Since then, California's most selective public colleges and graduate schools have struggled to assemble student bodies that reflect the state's demographic mix.

Universities around the country could soon face the same challenge. The U.S. Supreme Court is set to revisit the thorny issue of affirmative action less than a decade after it endorsed the use of race as a factor in college admissions.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_RACE_BLIND_ADMISSIONS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[virgogal]

1. I'm confused. Aren't Asians minorities?

[Riftaxe]

3. In this country yes

More then likely we are looking at students from 1st and 2nd generation extended asian families, when discussing the incredible job they are doing in the CA educational system.

There probably is quite a bit we could learn from studying the home environment that is producing such an awesome number of educated students who are demonstrating a remarkable qualification rate for secondary schools.

[bluestateguy]

5. There is the Tiger Mom book

but that rubbed a lot of people here the wrong way.

[Riftaxe]

9. Probably because it failed to distinguish what "worked"

from complete tyranny, however; I have to admit that I only read reviews about it, so it is impossible for me to say one way or another.

If it ever becomes available for free, definitely would make my reading list though

As a society, and a bit of an arrogant on occasion, we have a tendency to forget that there is a heck of a lot we can learn from other cultures. Fortunately we at least have the virtue of being among the most disorganized among them

[HiPointDem]

18. what's so surprising? asian americans = richer than white americans as a group, & over-represented

Last edited Sun Apr 22, 2012, 09:31 PM - Edit history (2)

in the top 5% of income.



Households headed by persons who identified as being Asian alone, on the other hand, were overrepresented among the top two quintiles. In the top five percent the percentage of Asians was nearly twice as high as the percentage of Asians among the general population.


A lot of Asians came to the US with significant capital. I did some research on immigrant capital years ago & was surprised to find that there was significant variation among white ethnics and the various shades of 'asian' and a clear connection between immigrant capital and economic status years down the road.

The focus on "culture" and study habits and the like is diversionary. People act "middle class" because they *are* middle class, they act "upper class" because they *are*, etc.

i'll add it's also no surprise that the folks who came here with the least capital or had their capital stolen from them continue to be the poorest (blacks & indians).

[4th law of robotics]

24. Asians came here with a lot of capital?

I wonder if they were aware of how good they had it.

[HiPointDem]

28. lol. i was waiting for the obligatory chinese coolie picture. there's more to asian immigration

to the US than chinese coolies.

[4th law of robotics]

29. Indeed, but that was a sizable chunk of it

Just like I'm sure you could find blacks who came to this country with lots of money.

[HiPointDem]

30. not really, no, it wasn't. and a lot of the chinese that immigrated here to work on the railroads

as coolies went home. and women were generally excluded for various reasons during the early immigrant waves, so many of those immigrants didn't establish families in the US.

not to mention that the greatest number/percent of chinese immigrants came to the US after WW2.

In 1910 there were under 100,000 Chinese living in the US, in 1940 about 106,000. Today over 3 million.

Contemporary Chinese America: Immigration, Ethnicity, and Community
p. 46


Passingly few chinese living in the US today are the descendants of coolies. They're more likely to be the descendants of small businessmen.

[virgogal]

26. Maybe the Asians are just smarter than the rest of us.

[XemaSab]

6. In the UC system

Berkeley is 2.9% black, 7.3% Hispanic, 0.7% Native American, 27.1% white, and 62% Asian.

California is 6.2% black, 37.6% Hispanic, 1% Native American, 40.1% white, and 13% Asian.

[pampango]

13. Very interesting statistics. Since whites are underrepresented at UC Berkeley (as are Blacks and,

particularly, Hispanics), are whites discriminated against? I would say "No" because the admissions process is (correct me if I'm wrong) still dominated by whites who would be unlikely to discriminate against their own race.

Does the fact that whites are underrepresented in the UC system mean that white voters who thought they were sticking it to minorities when they voted out affirmative action might now reconsider? Turns out they were sticking it to themselves as well since one minority is now greatly overrepresented in the university population. (I'm sure most of them professed to simply be in favor of "fairness" for everyone regardless of race and for letting the "best and brightest" into their universities, but the underlying assumption of many was that it would tilt things in favor of whites.)

This really is a difficult problem. The interests of California are not served by having its largest ethnic group so vastly underrepresented in its university system. Blacks and other non-Asian minorities undoubtedly still suffer from discrimination that impact their ability to compete on a "fair" basis in college admissions. If Black and Hispanic admission rates ever approach their percentages in the California population, whites and Asian will only have 53% of admissions rather than the 89% they have now.

Do we just "live with" the underrepresentation of Blacks and Hispanics? That doesn't sound like a liberal policy unless 21st century liberalism is quite different from the 20th century version.

If not and we take efforts to increase Hispanic and Black representation, then what about the white vs Asian competition? Do we let them compete freely with each other since the competition is "fair"? If that competition was as "fair" (a similar ratio) as it is now, Asians would be 37% of admissions and whites 16%.

Would that be an acceptable outcome? What would the political ramifications be?

[FarCenter]

19. It's more a matter of ethnicity than race

Blacks from the West Indies (e.g. Colin Powell) are an ethnic group with above average socioeconomic achievement.

The 62% Asian would be a mix of South Asians and East Asians, primarily Indians, Chinese and some Japanese and Koreans. Likely other Asian groups such as Indonesians and Filipinos do not fare as well proportionately.

Immigrant ethnic groups tend to lose their advantage after 2 or 3 generations, since their offspring are subject to the corrosive effects of American culture.

[Snake Alchemist]

21. Unfotunately, this statement is defied by actual statistics. nt

[4th law of robotics]

25. Seems like whites and blacks are being discriminated against about the same

based on those numbers.

Hispanics are getting it the worst and someone on the admissions board loves asians.

[lunatica]

2. I've worked at UC Berkeley for 15 years

Believe me. It's diverse. And it also has zero tolerance for racism or any ethnic hatred. Zero. On the UC Berkeley campus you see Palestinians, Jews, Chinese, Pakistani, Indian students along with Australian, students from all European countries, and American Blacks and Whites and Latinos. You even see illegal aliens who were brought here as children.

And you see it in the Faculty too.

My department is actually quite proud of the fact that some Latino and a Black graduate students accepted to come to our department. She's the first Black graduate student who has applied to the Graduate program in many years. We're delighted as we believe in diversity with a passion. Even the staff is diverse. White, Latinos, Chinese, Blacks and even a wonderful Irish woman and our Manager is from Spain. It's the same with the Faculty.

I love working in UC Berkeley for that reason. Anyone who claims different races and ethnic people can never get along is full of shit.

[XemaSab]

7. This is such a disingenuous statement

Today I was in Dunsmuir, California, and I saw THREE black people. THREE!!!! One of them was even a baby, which means that the black population in Dunsmuir is growing!!11!

Does the fact that there are black people in Dunsmuir mean that Dunsmuir is totally diverse?

Does it mean that if someone looks around and says, "Wow, Dunsmuir is totally not diverse!" that whoever says that is just flat wrong because Dunsmuir totally is diverse as proven by the fact that there are three black people there?

So if that's the case, then if someone says, "Wow, Berkeley is totally not diverse!" then whoever says that is just flat wrong because Berkeley totally is diverse as proven by the fact that a black person was admitted to grad school there?

[lunatica]

14. I guess you know there are only 3 black people in Dunsmuir because

that's all you saw in your one walk through there?

I work in UC Berkeley. I walk around the campus to get to wherever I'm going and there are lots of Black students and Faculty there. And there are lots of Latinos and Asians and Arabs and Whites too. And among Faculty, staff and students too.

Your point is less than useless.

[XemaSab]

15. I looked up the demographics online when I got home

I saw almost 10% of the black population of Dunsmuir yesterday!

I'm not arguing with you that UC Berkeley does not have people of every ethnicity under the sun; I am arguing with you that much as the presence of three black people in Dunsmuir does not make Dunsmuir a multicultural paradise, the presence of one black person in your department does not mean that the university is reflective of the ethnic diversity of the state.

[bluestateguy]

4. Affirmative action is not required by the Constitution

It is a policy preference meant to enhance diversity, but no state is obligated by the constitution to practice AA.

[Riftaxe]

10. That does not beat the procreating

for virginity argument.

AA boils down to people who favor racial discrimination for whatever reason versus those against racial discrimination for whatever reason.

You cannot make something dissolute by concentrating the same substance.

[MADem]

8. I think they ought to do a little affirmative action by zip code. That'll solve the problem. nt

[Quantess]

11. There are plusses and minuses to affirmative action in colleges.

One of the minuses is that hard working students from certain races get shafted, just because of their race. It's especially a slap in the face to poor asian and poor white students. That's why so many people are opposed to it.

[XemaSab]

16. I think we have a racist educational system in this state

and there's no reason that should end at the university door.

Black kids and Hispanic kids are much more likely to grow up poor and go to ghetto schools where there is a gauntlet of metal detectors and cops on the way to class every day.

Under those circumstances, I think giving a black kid or a Hispanic kid with a 3.5 GPA a shot at college is better for society as a whole than accepting every Asian kid or white kid with a 4.3.

I think that's the only path forward that will keep black people in particular from being a permanent underclass in our society.

[Taylor Smite]

23. Why not give a chance to

a poor kid who actually went to "ghetto schools where there is a gauntlet of metal detectors and cops on the way to class every day?" No reason to give a slot to a [insert minority] kid just because of race when they may have grown up in La Jolla or another super rich neighborhood. The universities have income data per financial aid reasons....use that for admission instead of just race. You will definitely be giving a chance to someone from the "permanent underclass" instead choosing minority kids solely because their race is associated with the bad part of town.

Assuming all black and hispanic kids or from the ghetto/barrio is like assuming the black kid walking down the street wearing a hoodie is out to rob a house.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

32. Been tried...and failed

Early in the life of collegiate AA, very high end schools were taking in minorities based on class rank and GPA, ignoring test and other things that might be biased. The result was massive failure. Those students, who might have done fine in the CSU system with some help bombed in the Ivy League. Its was very hard to see that happening. It helped the school make their then near mandatory quotas, but hurt all involved.

We are better bringing along minority schools that using going the numbers game again.

[xchrom]

12. Du rec. Nt

[4th law of robotics]

17. Inner city public schools are of such a low quality that

fewer minorities are prepared for college.

This leads to a racial imbalance in college.

Clearly this is all the colleges fault.

[pampango]

20. It's not all the colleges' fault, but it is society's problem which needs a society-wide solution.

It is frustrating when the blame gets shifted around from public schools to colleges themselves to families to society. And the problem goes on and on. Everyone seems to know that if we had a strong multi-racial middle class with strong families and good public schools we wouldn't have the racial imbalance in college.

[Snake Alchemist]

22. Perhaps we start by not allowing the more experienced teachers to simply transfer away

to better schools.

[XemaSab]

27. I think AA should be a legit part of that society-wide solution

[HiPointDem]

31. no, inner-city schools are *poor*. Poorly-resourced, often, with students who are poor, and

all the problems of poverty that suburban schools have less of.

[4th law of robotics]

33. My point was that since we have actually pretty decent colleges

we've decided to use them to fix a whole slew of other problems that are not their fault.

So kids graduate highschool with little understanding of math, science, and basic grammar? Fine, just cover that freshman year in college.

They're getting the blame for a problem they can't really control.

And rather than making up for those deficiencies it's actually just making our secondary education system worse.