Actually one of my friends from Texas said the 10% plan doesn't work, the details of which I'm not qualified to get into, just passing along what I was told.

To focus a bit more around the orginial question, was the decision Constitutional? Or were the justices catering to what seemed to be popular opinion? And what effect do you think the decisions will have on our society within the next twenty-five years?

I feel the decision was Constitutional. The Supreme Court knew what was at stake. Now, all the Colleges and Universities will have to evaluate their undergrad admissions policies and figure out how to make it work. The Effect is not going to hurt both Colleges and the work world too much, but I'll take an wait and see attitiude towards it. Overall, Affrimative Action is Still Standing and I'm Glad.

What if you were identified solely by your SSN? The adcoms wouldn't even see your address (so they wouldn't know if you were from Little Italy, Harlem, or the Upper East Side), just your numbers?

Just a thought, addressed to everyone, not just sugar and spice. I only picked up on what she wrote and started thinking....

Those questions on applications are always marked optional, or not required - just for statistical purposes. You may not like the questions, but they help develop the so-called reports on how well AA is or is not working.

Actually there were two cases, both decided with this supreme court that day, one was for the lawsuit against a law school (graduate) and one for u. of michigan (undergrad). It's the undergrad institution that was found wrong in making there admission standards with the extra 20 points or something like that.

I think that wouldn't really solve the problem. Far too many students of color face a disadvantage just based on the cultural structure of our country. We have made great strides as a nation in the past few decades, but you can't erase centuries of a system of mental genocide with 40 years of progressive legislation (see Spike Lee's "Bamboolzed". I don't feel I can fully express my point here, to do so would be far too long a post. However I hope you can kind of see where I'm coming from.

I dont know if this is an urban legen or what not.

My manager told me that the government use to give blacks a middle even number in their SSN. For example

010-24-9652

I guess they did this so people would know if you were white or black. Has anyone heard of this?

Also working in an admissions office I see a tons of SSN and I thought it was interesting that where you were born you get a certain prefix. Like in Mass a lot of people ssn's start with 010. In DC a lot of people's sn start with 578 or 577

i don't know if this is true, i've never heard of it. i'm caucasian and got my SS number almost 20 years ago and i have an even middle number.

It's an urban legend, fortunately:

http://www.snopes.com/business/taxes/blackssn.htm

As for the social security number being used instead of names in college admissions, it wouldn't be enough to "delete" the idea of race. People would still be able to list race-related clubs and extracurricular activities (Asian-American Student Organization, etc., and there are more subtle ones too -- we had a step team at my high school that was, as would probably be assumed, entirely African-American). Recommendations from teachers might mention race. And as Munchkin03 said, people who wanted to could always mention their "background" in the essay portion.

We can't make the process colorblind, and honestly I don't think that trying to is the right answer anyway.

AlphaGam, who is to say that these Afr. Ams are not from racist schools since racism DOES exist? Who is to say their teachers did not give them lower scores than they actually deserved because they were black? Who is to say those students did not participate in extracurricular activities and were made to feel uncomfortable by their over opinionated white peers and decided not to participate? AA was installed to level the playing ground because racism and sexism was a factor in college/employment etc. Like someone else mentioned, maybe the race question should be left out of the admissions process entirely and maybe even names too if the student's ethnicity could easily be identified.

For all of those who b*tch and moan about AA not being necessary, scholarships are given to non-minorities who decide to go to HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities). So if non-minorities who are under represented at these schools are given the opportunity to compete with the advantage of race taken in as a factor, why can't Afr. Ams be given the same opportunity at predominately white schools? My personal opinion is that white students do not want to be the minority and in a setting without their peers.

These kinds of statements make me so angry! :mad:
(counting to ten...trying to control myself)

I'm not saying racism doesn't exist, but making these kind of assumptions and a person assuming he/she is always getting the short end of the stick is what really keeping that person down.

I'm not trying to pick apart your post and this is the only post I'm leaving on this topic. But who is to say the reverse? Who is to say these African-American students ARE from racist schools? Who is to say their teachers did give them lower scores?

And over-opinionated white peers? I don't think we need to generalize like this....

This has been a great discussion so far. I don't want to see it turn into another flame war simply because of a few generalizations.

For the record, I support the intensions of AA, but I think most of us can agree that it doesn't always work the way it was intended?

Yep.